When “With Love, Meghan” hit Netflix in March 2025, viewers got the full sun-drenched Santa Barbara experience: celebrity chef guests, immaculate tablescapes, and the Duchess of Sussex back in her lifestyle content element. What didn’t make the cut? The 80-person crew, the rented $8 million farmhouse, and the technical choreography required to keep multiple cameras and audio sources in perfect sync across eight episodes.
Welcome to modern lifestyle television, where your mum’s old cooking shows have collided head-on with cinema-grade production values. And sitting quietly at the heart of it all is a piece of kit most people have never heard of: the timecode slate.
If you’ve seen any behind-the-scenes footage, you know the slate. That iconic clapperboard someone holds up before each take. But professional slates have evolved far beyond their film-era ancestors. Today’s smart slates display embedded timestamps that lock every camera and audio recorder to the same clock. Without one, editors spend hours manually syncing footage. With one, everything clicks into place like LEGO.
Here’s the rub: proper smart slates typically run between $1,600 and $2,000. That is, until Deity Microphones launched the TC-SL1 for $999 and did something no one else had bothered to do. They added Bluetooth.
The Netflix Effect
“With Love, Meghan” sits at an interesting crossroads. It’s not a documentary. It’s not a scripted drama. It’s lifestyle programming shot like prestige telly, with multiple camera angles, professional audio, and celebrity guests from Roy Choi to Mindy Kaling to Chrissy Teigen across two full seasons. They wrapped the first season before it even premiered, then immediately banged out season two (which dropped in August 2025).
That kind of velocity demands systems that simply work. You’re capturing intimate cooking moments with Alice Waters, cutting to beekeeping demos with Daniel Martin, then moving outdoors for garden scenes, all with multiple cameras rolling. The timecode slate becomes the backbone holding your entire shoot together.
This is the new baseline for lifestyle content. Netflix greenlit the show, renewed it within days, and ordered a holiday special. Each requires the same multi-camera, multi-audio choreography. Most of the filming happened at the Cipolla farmhouse (though some scenes used Meghan’s actual Montecito home), with an 80-person crew managing complex lighting, audio, and camera work.
And here’s where traditional workflows hit a wall. Legacy timecode systems need physical cables to sync everything. On a lifestyle shoot with moving subjects, changing locations, and spontaneous moments, all that cabling becomes a nightmare.
Why It Actually Matters
The TC-SL1 cuts through this mess with surprising elegance. Wireless Bluetooth sync through the Sidus Audio app lets you control multiple slates and timecode boxes from 75 metres away. Dual hot-swappable batteries give you 25+ hours of runtime. The anti-reflective display stays readable even in brutal California sunlight. The clapper’s made from sustainably sourced black walnut. And crucially, it plays nice with existing kit via 5-pin LEMO and 6.35mm TRS ports.
The timecode generator holds drift to just one frame every 72 hours. Proper professional spec at consumer-friendly money. Open the clapper and the display plus backlight wake up automatically. Both dim independently for night shooting. Flip a switch and the timecode display inverts for tail slating.
But the clever bit is how everything connects. The TC-1 timecode boxes talk to the slate. The THEOS wireless mics include timecode. It all syncs through one app. Even big-budget Netflix productions expect lean, efficient workflows these days, and this integration removes genuine friction.
The payoff? Shows like “With Love, Meghan” can move fast. Season one racked up 12.6 million viewing hours in week one and hit 5.3 million views by mid-2025. Season two, featuring guests like José Andrés and Christina Tosi, benefits from the same streamlined approach. When your show depends on capturing spontaneous moments and genuine interactions, technical faff can’t get in the way.
The Bigger Picture
Streaming has completely rewritten what “lifestyle programming” means. Compare “With Love, Meghan” (directed by Michael Steed of “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” fame, A-list guests, multiple premium locations) to cooking shows from even 2015. Production values have converged with scripted content. The bar has moved.
This shift creates openings for tech that bridges professional capabilities with reasonable pricing. When Archewell Productions (the Duchess and Prince Harry’s company) extended their Netflix deal and immediately launched into season two plus a holiday special, they needed a kit that could scale across multiple simultaneous projects without exploding the equipment budget.
The TC-SL1 represents something broader: the democratisation of professional workflows. YouTube creators, documentary teams, indie production houses can now access systems that were studio-exclusive half a decade ago. At $999, what would’ve cost double becomes a sensible investment rather than a fantasy line item.
As cameras and audio gear increasingly ship with timecode as standard, the missing link was an affordable, wireless slate to tie everything together. The TC-SL1 filled that gap at precisely the right moment.
Whether you’re shooting cooking demos in a rented Santa Barbara farmhouse or running a scrappy commercial production with multiple cameras, the core challenge stays the same. Keep everything in sync without throttling creativity. The TC-SL1 works because it makes the technical infrastructure disappear, which is exactly what good production gear should do.
Below: All the times we spotted our TC-SL1 in the first season of “With Love, Meghan”.