Boy Meets Girl on ITV1

There aren't many things that get my Feminist hackles rising. I'm not a Feminist, or even a woman, so it takes quite a bit for me to get annoyed about the portrayal of women on screen (or stage, or in print etc.). ITV's Boy Meets Girl was enough.

As the title implies, this is a gender-swap show. Apparently, it's a comedy; the laughs are – present, yes, but – pretty few and far between, to be honest. Martin Freeman's blokey bloke, Danny, finds himself mysteriously zapped into the body of fashion journalist Veronica (Rachael Stirling), after an implausible meeting outside a power generator. There's a nice bit of flashback to tell us how Danny got there, and it sets him up as an interesting character, while leaving Veronica's past largely blank.

And that's the problem with Boy Meets Girl – it's all about Danny. Veronica is vapid (and that's not just handy alliteration, she really is vacuous – her mind as well her story). The first episode focusses on what Danny – in Veronica's body – did after the body-zapping. Without wanting to ruin it for you, s/he got rushed to hospital to be collected by the one bright spark of the episode: Paterson Joseph (I tell a lie: Danny's B&Q co-workers are alright as well). After that, we've essentially got what feels like a conveyor belt of man-in-a-woman's-body scenarios. Which is fine, but the woman-in-a-man's-body stuff is conspicuous by its absence. The ITV blurb only tells us about what happens to Danny, and that bias is seen throughout the show.

So, what does this man-in-a-woman's-body learn? Predictably, he has fun with his new breasts and a vibrator. He also learns that the woman whose life he now has – the fashion journalist, remember? cue derogatory scowls and cries of 'fashion journalist?' - may well be having an affair with her friend's man (who happens to have 'callous, womanising jerk' written all over his smug face). The sort of man you'd have to be pretty dim to want to have a relationship with. Danny (as Veronica) has conversations with her female friend where they essentially say that men are rubbish. Somehow it's not very fresh or satisfying. In fact, it's all rather obvious, and that conversation is especially awkward; it just doesn't feel real.

What quickly became obvious is that Boy Meets Girl was written by a man, imagining what it would be like in a woman's body. I checked – no, really, I hate to make baseless assumptions – and it turns out that writer David Allison is indeed a man. Gosh. This may be why we have such vapid women, who somehow can't fend for themselves. Occasionally, Veronica (as Danny) is seen drifting around looking confused – which is understandable, but at the same time, Danny (as Veronica) has adjusted and slipped into her life by convincing everybody that s/he is just a bit shaken after her electrocution.

The female fashion journalist is utterly incompetent, while the male DIY store worker scorns writing horoscopes but can barely handle stilettos. That's all you need to know about this stereotyped, one-sided affair.

Personal Affairs on BBC Three (Episodes 1 & 2)

This is a man's world. “It's like the sexual revolution happened to someone else”, as Archie Panjabi's aggressively progressive senior partner tells timid temp Sid (wide-eyed Ruth Negga) when she arrives at the bank in which Personal Affairs is based.

Sid has managed to get herself installed as a temp amongst the PAs at City business Hartmann Payne, as part of a cunning revenge plan formulated by her boyfriend (Al Weaver – disguised, for some reason, as an Orthodox Jew). Apparently, his mother blames senior VP Rock Van Gelder (Robert Gant) for her massive losses in the risky world of high-risk finance. The disappearance in Episode One of Rock's PA, Grace (Olivia Grant), throws the other girls into a tizzy as they try to balance their Private Investigator-style activity with demanding roles as PAs in a busy, successful business. Then there's the private life of each to consider! Lucy (Laura Aikman) has become pregnant and is looking for promotion when a junior associate post becomes open. Midge (Annabel Scholey) has given up her daughter for adoption eight years back and has now started to question that decision when the father – supposedly a suicide case eight years ago – crops up as the apparent reason for Grace's disappearance. Nicole (Maimie McCoy) is perhaps the most stable of the lot, rejecting all men as control-seeking bastards whom she won't allow to rule her. Instead, she has casual sex with them, and forgets about them, while being very arch and superior about everything.

And that may be the crucial thing about Personal Affairs. Sex. Or possibly gender and sex. All the PAs seem to be defined by their sexual relations (be it pregnancies or Midge 'accidentally shagging' men she doesn't like). The office has a clear gender divide: the men are in charge, the women treated as lackeys. The proverbial glass ceiling is mentioned frequently. Female partner Archie Panjabi is more macho than your average bloke, and the PAs are beneath her notice. She's disappointed/angered by their inability to follow her lead and act like men in the male workplace, and disgusted by the outfits they wear to appeal to the masculine eyes that rove about so much in that workplace.

As she says, the idea of a sexual revolution seems not to have arrived at Hartmann Payne. Now, I've always struggled to see any reason why women wouldn't be treated on an equal footing with men – indeed, taken it for granted that this is as it ought to be. So the offices of Hartmann Payne seem horribly archaic, backward. It feels like the fifties when Gant's languid Texan compares his PA to the wicket fence around his ranch – he likes his fence to be pretty, so tells her she should dress appealingly. In fact, it's all rather like fifties-based Mad Men (which felt like What Women Want without Mel Gibson and the mind-reading), but British and interesting.

What none of these men seem to realise is how much they rely on their PAs – Sid is right to alter Rock's analogy by describing herself as the ranch's foundations, not the fence; he rattles her, his ranch will collapse. In a way, I can almost understand the sneering prejudice...almost. To follow (what I shall call) the Wimbledon Argument, women are paid less than men because – essentially – they do less. Their Wimbledon prize cheques are smaller because they play three sets, not five. However, to counter the Wimbledon Argument, they've still won Wimbledon, just like the men. The PAs do just as much work as their bosses (even their boss's job, in Lucy's case), but their work is much less public. They seem to exist as a pretty face and body when needed, a typist when required, silent and out of the way when not. But there's no way any of the bosses could cope without them.

Some of the man-bashing is perhaps a bit unnecessary, but the point holds that, here at least, women are under-appreciated. A bit like Boy Meets Girl, the gender of the writer is obvious in the gender portrayal onscreen. The decent men that we just know are out there somewhere are conspicuous by their absence in Personal Affairs. Even friendly, co-conspirator Simon (Darren Boyd) is quietly determined to 'help' Sid out of what he describes as an obsession with maintaining her virginity, and therefore her childishness.

This is a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman on the Earth.