• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, November 26, 2024

Prince Harry and his wife have chosen a decidedly upper-crust subject for their next docuseries for Netflix.

It is the wonderful, magical world of polo, which is quite a topic to take up for a man and woman “of the people.”

To be fair, I am not completely sure whether they have ever positioned themselves that way. But they did quit the royal family and relocate to California. 

By all appearances, they have adopted an American lifestyle in the Golden State, but not exactly in the manner of American commoners.

Not that there is anything particularly wrong with being wealthy in America. But a docuseries on polo? 

The five-episode docuseries -- titled simply “Polo” -- drops on Netflix on December 10. It is not available yet for TV scribes to give it a look, but Netflix posted a description on its press site.

“The documentary series follows elite global players on and off the field as they compete in the high-stakes U.S. Open Polo Championships in Wellington, Florida. Through fierce rivalries and intense training, viewers will get an unprecedented glimpse into the dedication and skill required to compete at the sport’s highest level,” Netflix says.

Competitors taking center stage in the show include a “father-son-duo widely regarded as the greatest players of all time,” says the Netflix publicity material.

Prince Harry has had experience playing polo since this is what royals do. But there has been no word on whether he will appear to strut his polo stuff for a chukker or two. 

Actually, polo sounds like a great topic for the docuseries treatment, since it represents a world not open to most of us. 

So once again, TV has an opportunity to take us where we cannot go ourselves -- in this case, the U.S. Open Polo Championships, which were first staged in 1904.

Polo is not a subject you come across much, if ever, on American TV. The only other reference to the sport that I can recall is when Ralph Kramden mispronounced “polo ponies” as “pah-LAH-pah-neez” in “The Honeymooners."

Netflix positions the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as the series’ executive producers through their company, Archewell Productions.

In the press material, he is “Prince Harry” and she is simply “Meghan,” which one assumes are brand names that they prefer and likely insist upon everywhere they go.

The photo of the three horse’s asses above was one of only four photos from the show that were available on the Netflix press site. 

Free advice for TV p.r. departments: Try and avoid posting photos of this type for the press because some in the TV press corps simply cannot resist making cheeky comments about them.