AMANDA PLATELL: I’ve watched Meghan’s Miss Perfect act. Look closely and you’ll see what’s REALLY going on

Well, With Love, Meghan was certainly worth the breathless wait, as Mean Girl Megs transformed before our eyes into a loving homebody, a little Miss Perfect, oozing with so much gorgeousness it was emanating from her every pore.

She is such an unutterably yummy mummy I swear that if she could have, Megs would have eaten herself.

Her self-love gushed like a newly discovered Texan oil field in the series that she desperately hopes will stem her tanking popularity Stateside and save not just the Sussexes’ blushes after two dud Netflix series, but also their future fortunes.

With her new breathless schoolgirl voice – where did that come from? – and the smell of freshly-baked, triple-layered, honey-lemon drizzle cake wafting from the TV screen, I half expected Bambi surrounded by fluttering blue butterflies to appear in the garden of the multi-million mansion she borrowed for the show.

Picture-perfect Megs starts episode one in a pure white designer beekeeper’s suit and we’re told that, when dealing with bees, ‘the biggest thing is keeping a low tone – talk in our bee voice’.

Local beekeeper Branden informs her that ‘bees were around long before dinosaurs’ to which Megs gushes: ‘No, that’s amazing!!!’ before adding: ‘Good hives, good vibes’.

Asking how long a bee lived for, Megs looked bereft learning it was only four to six weeks – about as long as I predict this vacuous show will last before being axed.

‘When you burn a beeswax candle you actually purify the air,’ says the beekeeper. ‘How’s that for full circle?’

‘Amazing,’ says Megs.

‘Amazing,’ he replies.

And then they hug.

Pretty soon, Miss Perfect turns into Little Miss Competent, as she gets ready to welcome her bestie make-up artist Daniel Martin from her days in Suits, the TV cable show on which she made her name.

’Whenever I have someone come and stay, one of my favourite things to do is to prep the guest room,’ Meghan says, gush, smile, flutter eyelashes, repeat. ‘I think about the two places of a guest experience once they’ve gone into their room. What’s at the side of the bed for them?

‘That’s their good morning and good night moment, and what is in the bathroom for them so they can have a beautiful soak, a nice bath at the end of night.’

So we learn how to make smelly bath salts, and a teabag of dried flowers placed in a jar and are told the ribbon for the personal label on such gifts should be bow-tied, not knotted, to make it easy to undo.

And then there’s the welcome tray to make for the guest room of home-made popcorn and peanut butter pretzels. Yuck!

She chops some vegetable crudites, advising us it’s always important to plate up food with love, even if it’s just a takeaway.

Daniel responds on cue with a ‘Why doesn’t anyone ever present peas like this?’ – ie still in half the pod – before telling us ‘I love tomatoes’. Culinary gems!

She makes her signature one-pot pasta – halved cherry tomatoes, olive oil, salt, lemon rind, garlic ‘as we’re all friends here’, with dried spaghetti on top, a few chopped veg leaves and boiling water. Simmer and serve, with Megs sampling a forkful the size of a cherry tomato. Followed by a little hunch of the shoulders and ‘tastes amazing’ look at the camera.

Sadly Daniel cut his hand chopping the tomatoes and has to be removed from slicing duty, although perhaps it was a ruse to alleviate the sheer boredom of it all.

With a devilish grin Meghan asks: ‘Shall we grate some parmesan?’ To which he replies for the umpteenth time ‘amazing, awesome’.

And on it goes, and on. They made a lemon cake with the honey Megs had scraped from the bee hives and she showed Daniel how to decorate the cake with strawberries, imparting ‘the little tips and tricks’ that make someone feel special, and how to make a piping tube out of a freezer bag, adding that it’s important to cut a hole in it.

More helpful hints followed, like how to crack an egg into a bowl and why you must sieve flour but not necessarily sugar when baking.

This wasn’t just any old cake either, it was decorated inside with raspberry jam and some weird sugary cream. As Meghan accepted modestly, it wasn’t perfect on the outside, but was a ‘beautiful inside cake’.

To which Daniel cooed: ‘Amazing, awesome, just like you.’ Or did I imagine that?

Given the vast amount of honey, the cake was probably not so beautiful for everyone’s insides, not for diabetics’ anyway.

So all round, episode one of With Love, Meghan was heavy on the syrup, her cutesy coo voice a distraction, and the celebration of her friend after he managed to cut tomatoes and veg, utterly laughable.

But it was also disappointing in other ways. In the trailer Megs teased us about her surprise visitor. Who could that be? For a moment my heart leapt, was her father Thomas, who she hasn’t seen since before she married royalty, the ace up her sleeve? Would once devoted father and daughter finally be reunited?

Alas it was just Daniel – whose vocabulary, as we know, was limited limited to ‘amazing’, ‘awesome’ and ‘ Oh, my gosh’ – while her dad would have to watch his once devoted daughter’s new venture like the rest of us, on Netflix, if he can even afford it.

Meanwhile, Harry’s been sidelined apart from one cameo appearance in the final episode where he is seen pouring a glass of orange juice and contributes just ten words, all in praise of his amazing wife: ‘Well done, You did a great job. I love it.’

He is referring to the brunch she produced for ‘my people that I love’ and to ‘celebrate the next chapter of my life’. A brunch in which, she exclaims while preparing it, ‘Has anyone in the world been so excited by the sight of lettuces?’ Steady on Megs!

A brunch where she offers a handwritten menu: ‘Anything I can do with handwriting adds a personal touch.’ Although quite how personal remains open to question for we didn’t exactly see her executing the perfect calligraphy that emerged.

Anyway, the Duchess of Sussex clearly felt she didn’t need any royal endorsements from her spare-part husband for this show. She is named as an executive producer, hubby Harry is not. He’s too busy feeding the chooks I’m guessing – chooks that we learn in the show get fed plenty of greens. ‘That’ll make the yolks even more yellow and brighter,’ Megs tells us. ‘It’s all connected.’

In an interview days before the launch Meghan said she and Harry are going through another honeymoon phase and that he has a glint in his eye ‘when he sees me doing the thing that I was doing when he first met me’. Given her new series, she means being the perfect wife, mother, provider, inspiration to lesser women and spreader of unlimited joy to Netflix viewers.

Sorry to break it to you Megs, but that glint might also be dollar signs going round in his dim head – because he is as desperate as you are for this to be a success so you can continue your multi-millionaire LA lifestyles.

Even if social media explodes with criticism of the show, it could be a win-win – it is so awful it is almost compelling and sources within Netflix hope it will prove irresistible to a ‘hate-watch’ audience of those who don’t like Meghan.

For now though, there’s no hate. Mean Girl Meghan has been vaporised for a fresh-baked version full of sweetness.

Although she couldn’t resist one dig at the royals at the end of episode eight, when she said her ‘new chapter’ was ‘part of that creativity that I’ve missed so much’. Judging by With Love, Meghan, it’s creativity that none of us have missed at all.