Last night's TV: Nothing less than an island disaster

THE women are harridans; the men are horrible; the concept is shatteringly sordid. I kept hoping that When Women Rule The World was going to turn out to have some kind of ironic twist for much longer than it possibly could have done, simply because it was so hard to believe that this disaster ever got commissioned.

The premise is the sort of thing that a bossy child might make up for her friends to play: everyone is on an island and all the women get to tell all the men what to do all the time. There really is nothing more to it than that, despite presenter Steve Jones (perhaps he just really, really wanted to go to Bermuda) describing it as "the ultimate gender experiment". I'd call it more of an endurance test.

The women included "Christine, 26, feminist writer", as her caption had it. Yes, she's thoroughly in the tradition of Simone de Beauvoir and Andrea Dworkin, who were equally as happy as Christine to emerge from the sea wearing only a clinging gold bikini. "Oh feminism, how you've changed," as Jones cooed, though to be fair he splashed around in tight trunks too.

There was also "Gemma, 23" who owns her own management company and is a "door whore" (presumably some sort of female bouncer), on the strength of which she was elected queen of the women. This meant she got to be at least twice as nasty to the men when they arrived on the island: "G-Range, 24, rapper"; "Mikey, 21, football freestyler" (a professional keepy-upper, I guess) and the rest, all chosen for their willingness to spout sexism on demand.

Having assembled such a fascinating array, the programme-makers clearly felt their job was over, leaving them to get on with shouting at each other about how hard they had or had not worked at clearing driftwood.

Ah, but it's all a bit of fun, innit? A sort of 21st-century post-ironic, post-modern, post-feminist, pre-post-collapse of civilisation equivalent of the Benny Hill Show or a Carry On film. Except that When Women Rule The World was deeply unentertaining even on its own lowest-denominator level. Once the incredulity that this is really it sinks in, all that's left is how tedious and predictable it is.

The awful participants are practically following a script and there's absolutely nothing real about it. By comparison, Big Brother is a challenging insight into modern sexual and cultural norms.

After the boredom comes depression. It's like stages in the grief process and what I'm mourning is the continual slow death – by suicide – of Channel 4. At one time, that jigsaw number 4 stood for originality and experimentation; now it's more of an indication of the appropriate mental age to watch rubbish like this.

By comparison, Chateau Monty seemed like a blessed relief, with its soundtrack of the Jean de Florette/Stella Artois music and lovely shots of nice donkeys meandering through the French countryside. But to be perfectly honest, this series – which follows posh wine writer Monty Waldin as he attempts to run his own vineyard – is no fine vintage.

It was hard to care about his uneventful story – there was actually five full minutes about cow manure – particularly as a sneering voiceover mocked his eccentric philosophy of "biodynamics". This involves lunar cycles and "harnessing cosmic planetary forces in order to make your plants receptive to beneficial energies". Apparently you can taste the results in the wine, which has a subtle aroma of black cherry, a delicate hint of vanilla and a lingering aftertaste of total bull.