Yesterday morning the entertainment department at the BBC sent me and my fellow TV critics a news release giving notice of a new comedy game show, entitled If I Ruled the World These are the first 16 words: "Lying, cheating, fighting Bribery, adultery, hypocrisy. It's all in a day's work for our seasoned politicians." There is a wonderful casualness about this assertion which reveals the confidence with which it was written. It transcends the possibility of contradiction, because this is something that we all know; it is incontestable, forming a backdrop to everything we see and hear; it is common wisdom in the pubs, a cliche on the golf-course - politicians are, as a matter of empirical fact, all rogues and bastards. Those arguing that the balance has been tipped too far in favour of women choose consistently to ignore such statistics. Chad and Howard in their own extreme and deluded way are only acting on the information that is continually and selectively given to men.This film strips their world bare. In a sterile world of jostling for power over who gets what software these men become buddies Howard lies and cheats to be like Chad Chad lies and cheats to get one over on Howard. What happens to Christine is irrelevant until Howard becomes so confused by his own emotions he can only yell at her that she is a retard.I am not suggesting that the world is as it is shown here, but I am saying that the patterns of behaviour within the film, abhorrent as they might be, will be recognisable to any woman.

You cannot tell just by looking at us that we are taking over the world, but every single day of the week we read yet another statistic about education or work that must make men feel insecure.We can if we choose also read another set of statistics which shows that women are still not being promoted, still not earning as much as men, and remain subject to all sorts of sexual abuse at home, on the streets, and at work. For the fact is that this new breed of women is us, our sisters, our daughters. There are no female executives, Demi Moore type bosses sexually harassing their employees; it's just that these men feel this to be the case This is why the film strikes such a nerve. They look normal on the outside, but inside who knows what is going on? (This of course is the opposite message from that of the infamous bra ads which suggested that whatever women looked like on the outside, underneath they were as soft and gentle and feminine as ever.)Isn't that just the worry these days? The new breed of women is revealed in In The Company of Men as a paranoid fantasy.

In Dead Ringers he has his psychotic gynaecologist designing sadistic medical instruments for what he describes as "mutant women". What is so disturbing about In The Company of Men is that the hatred of women is never ironised It is visceral. When Chad rages on about a new breed of women taking over ("Inside they're all the same - meat and gristle and hatred") we are reminded that the sheer fear and hatred of women's bodies, of literally their insides, is still present, is still powerful.The only other film-maker who conjures up such disgust is David Cronenberg. We live in a culture in which all kinds of misogyny are acceptable as long as they are funny or ironic or just plain stupid. Misogyny, I'm afraid, is a word that gets tossed around all the time without much understanding of what it means.