Why your other half WON’T be fighting you for the TV remote this Xmas

There’s nothing on that isn’t aimed at women!

ThE ghost of Christmas past will loom large in our house this year. he will come to keep me company while my wife, daughter, mother-in-law and nieces watch the telly, and my sons play video games.

And he will remind me of all those yuletides when the men in the family had their viewing needs properly catered for, not like this year.

Where are The Guns of Navarone when you need them? They have been well and truly silenced.

The festive TV schedules look as if they’ve been plotted by the general committee of the Women’s Institute. The first female Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker, will make her much-anticipated debut on Christmas Day. And the BBC’s big drama this Christmas is Little Women, a three-part adaptation over consecutive nights of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel about the lives of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. It stars Emily Watson and the venerable Angela Lansbury.

Of course, we chaps are allowed to watch, too. But if we don’t fancy it, what else is there for us to get stuck into? Well, there’s a festive special of Call The Midwife, the series created by heidi Thomas, who happens also to be the writer of the Little Women TV adaptation.

Meanwhile, ITV’s big hollybedecked special is Victoria, written by Daisy Goodwin, with Jenna Coleman in the title role, getting all gloomy with Christmas coming until her beloved prince Albert (Tom hughes) transforms Buckingham palace into a winter wonderland.

I don’t know a man who doesn’t like a bit of snowy Victoriana at this time of year, but even so, it’s not exactly Where Eagles Dare.

Back at the BBC, the other major drama offering, scheduled directly after the first episode of Little Women on Boxing Day, is The Miniaturist, set in 17th-century Amsterdam and adapted from the bestselling novel by Jessie Burton.

It’s a two-parter starring Anya Taylor-Joy as the new young wife of a wealthy merchant and, as her forbidding sister-in-law, Romola Garai, who says she loved the book for its ‘strong feminist themes’.

The story is about a woman finding her voice in a controlling and strongly patriarchal society.

PERhAps that reflects what has happened to the Christmas TV schedules; maybe we men dominated for too long and now we’re being punished for it.

After all, for those of us old enough to remember a time when there were only three TV channels, the people synonymous with Christmas telly in our formative years all wore the trousers.

Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies, Bruce Forsyth, Mike Yarwood, Dick Emery, stanley Baxter, perry Como, Bing Crosby, Captain Mainwaring and sergeant Wilson, steve McQueen on his motorbike in The Great Escape and, a little later, Del Boy and Rodney. When I was a boy, even the folk not wearing the trousers on telly at Christmas were very often men. As I recall, Ben-hur wore a skirt, and so did Jason and all his doughty Argonauts.

Back then, the only women commanding our attention on the box while the turkey was roasting, or once the pudding had been scoffed, were the wholesomely doh-a-deering Julie Andrews, in The sound of Music, or Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. And the Queen with her Christmas message, of course.

Otherwise, festive TV was a redoubtably male preserve. Even when Eric and Ernie had a female guest star on their Christmas show, the response was always led by men, like the collective bellow of delight in 1976 — ‘Wow, have you seen Angela Rippon’s legs!’ — when a po-faced newsreader showed just what she’d been hiding under her desk.

Change has been coming for a while. It was probably spearheaded by The Vicar Of Dibley, which for a few years was the ratings-grabbing fairy on top of the BBC’s Christmas tree. The late Victoria Wood (celebrated this year with an affectionate tribute, Our Friend

Victoria At Christmas) did her bit, too. But the schedules this Christmas have tipped the scales so emphatically that there is hardly anything reflecting traditional male interests.

Even the cricket from Australia, which in an Ashes year always yields the stirring Boxing Day spectacle of a packed, sundrenched Melbourne Cricket Ground, is stuck on BT sport and less accessible to a TV audience than it has ever been.

According to Alison Graham, the TV editor for the Radio Times: ‘It’s raining women. Men aren’t getting a look in!’

This may just be coincidence but it does seem significant that The Miniaturist, with its powerful feminist message, was hastily scheduled to replace the Agatha Christie drama Ordeal By Innocence — suspended when its star, Ed Westwick, was accused of sexual assault — although he denies any wrong doing.

Women have even taken over the domain of light entertainment, which used to be overwhelmingly dominated by men. On Christmas Eve, the BBC has reunited former Great British Bake Off hosts Mary Berry, Mel Giedroyc and sue perkins for the first time since they refused to make the switch to Channel 4.

In the clunkily titled Mary, Mel and sue’s Big Christmas Thank You, the threesome travel to south Wales ‘to bring festive magic’ to the Rhondda Valley. I dare say the good people of the Rhondda can make their own fun but never mind, the Beeb was obviously desperate to knead some more life out of the Bake- Off formula. Expect soggybottom quips galore. As for situation comedy, another traditional male preserve, ITV’s big treat for Boxing Day is a Birds Of A Feather Christmas special with pauline Quirke, Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph. And the major comedy sketch show of the festive period is a Christmas Day reunion of Dawn French and Jennifer saunders, wryly called 300 Years of French and saunders. I’m all for equality but this is a bit much. Even the roster of classic films seems to favour women. slumping down, replete with food and drink, in front of a golden oldie is one of the great pleasures of Christmas, but you won’t find The Magnificent seven anywhere this year. It’s all Mildred pierce, Whatever happened To Baby Jane, All About Eve and The Red shoes, while BBC1’s showcase afternoon film on Christmas Day is Kenneth Branagh’s 2015 Cinderella.

There will be no grappling for the remote control in our house. I’ll just toss it to the girls, go away and read a book.

ACTuALLY, we have two tellies so I can always unwrap that boxset of The Wire that has stayed in its cellophane for years, or see what Netflix has to offer.

That’s how it is at Christmas now; long gone are the days when my friends and I all waited for the fat festive editions of the Radio Times and TV Times like expectant fathers pacing hospital corridors (which is something else that doesn’t happen any more).

Once I had them, I planned my Christmas viewing with forensic precision — or at least, as forensically as I could manage in purple felt-tipped pen. And there was so much for me to watch — usually with my dad while, in those less enlightened times, Mum sweated alone over a hot stove — that I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be told that if I didn’t tear myself away from the telly I’d get ‘square eyes’.

My old mum died this year. There’s nobody left to tell me that if I watch too much telly I’ll become square-eyed. But honestly, this Christmas, with its stealthy feminist makeover, chance would be a fine thing.