Is it just me? Or are you sick of festive TV schmaltz too? asks MARION McGILVARY 

It seems as though all you have to do is put on a Christmas jumper and a square-jawed daytime TV actor will turn up to sweep you off your fur-booted feet and into a winter wonderland of love. Well, at least as far as Netflix is concerned.

Never have our screens been quite so knee-deep in ‘holiday’ movies, apparently all set in the same cutesy New England town where it always snows, and the heroine, who owns her own cupcake store/inn/dog grooming parlour, finds her soulmate just in time for Santa to ‘ho ho ho’ his way to her wreath-laden door.

In these challenging times, streaming services seemingly want to transport us to fantasyland, with enough saccharine Hallmark movies to put us into a diabetic coma.

I’m as fond of the notion of a magical Christmas as the next romantic fool — why else would my house look like Santa’s Grotto?

But nobody wants to have a daily diet of the telly equivalent of Dairy Milk. You need some dark, 70 per cent cocoa in there.

All that happy-ever-after and expensive real estate doesn’t make you feel better, it makes your molars hurt from a combination of sugar and envy. Especially when compared with many families’ reality of isolation and less cash to splash.

Not that I’m arguing for films full of reality — just fewer empty calories.

So spare me the festive romcoms, I’d rather watch the oldies: Little Women, It’s A Wonderful Life, or anything with Muppets in it.

And I mean the proper furry Muppets. Not the ones wearing plaid and cutting down a Douglas fir inside a palatial snow globe, drinking hot cocoa in his ’n’ hers novelty Christmas mugs. Bah, humbug to that slush!