Christmas 2012: A bleak midwinter in front of the TV My Christmas TV viewing requirements are ludicrously simple: I want to blub my way through a box of Kleenex in a sherry-tinged haze of seasonal mawkishness. So I was thrilled to learn that the BBC is broadcasting a special edition of Call the Midwife on Christmas Day. The first series, with its reliably heart-wrenching themes of childbirth and East End poverty, had me weeping into my cocoa. Not to be outdone, ITV have promised that its two-hour Downton Abbey special will also turn on the nation's waterworks. It's reassuring that the two networks" bigwigs realise that tragedy, even more than comedy, is what we crave at Christmas. Those primogenitors of the Yuletide weepie, Charles Dickens and Frank Capra, knew this only too well, offering us copious examples of human suffering in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. Both author and auteur acknowledge the audience's need for an old-fashioned dose of trauma at such a charged time of the year. Only then, shriven by cathartic emotions, can people move with proper gratitude towards happy endings. The Christmas weepie need not concern itself with social realism and gloom. There's enough of that on the streets outside. Sentimental dramas cheer their audiences with the happy illusion that all catastrophes can be overcome. They leave you with the tearful elation of Bobbie in E Nesbit's The Railway Children, when her long-lost father returns home. It may be coincidence that Call the Midwife's Jenny Agutter played Bobbie so movingly in Lionel Jeffries" classic 1970 film; but I like to think the director knew that each time we saw her a subliminal part of our brains would sob, "Daddy, my daddy!" It's certainly one reason I'd put my money on Call the Midwife beating Downton on the tear-jerking scale alone. That and the fact that Downton's delicious high society whirl is not as conducive to atavistic sorrow as the high drama of childbirth. The BBC claims Call the Midwife is "grittier" than Downton, though the Farrow and Ball shades of its tastefully distressed East End owe just as much to artifice. But Call the Midwife can feature tragic little orphans and, as Walt Disney would tell you (remember Bambi?), there's nothing in the canon more tragic than that. No doctor's note? You can't be unwell then Who would be a GP nowadays? Even the most tolerant medics tell how they are besieged by legions of the "worried well," convinced every cold is flu and each ache the onset of cancer. We see the NHS as a routine service, rather than a privilege with finite resources. Dr Phillip Lee MP is the brave man who stood up this week and berated the public for its failure to display the "stoic" attitude of the wartime generation. It's hard to disagree, but the doctor has failed to diagnose one other major problem with the system. If your child is ill (as my younger son has been for 10 days), or if you miss work through a virus, a culture of suspicion and hectoring bureaucracy demands confirmation of your malaise from the doctor. You may know - and she may know - that nothing but bed rest and vegetable broth will help. But no one believes you're unwell unless you're waving pills and a doctor's note. Jessica Ennis's muscles quest is doomed Jessica Ennis is a beautiful and inspirational woman, but she may be doomed in her quest to encourage girls to develop a muscly physique in the pursuit of sporting excellence. If someone had told me, aged 15, that I should relinquish my hopes of breasts and a waist for the lean, hard, delineated torso of the champion athlete, I would have bolted for the nearest sofa. Even now, a glimpse of Madonna's sinewy arms makes me flinch in terror. It's unfashionable to say so in these yoga-honed days, but don't men and small children relish the embrace of a pillow-soft woman?