Ashley (Britt Robertson) organises a male strip show to save her parents’ bar in this festive Netflix romcom they should have called The Lap-land Dancers.

The movie opens with Ashley getting fired from her Broadway show for being too old, like The Substance off acid. But if you thought this would entail any feminist commentary, you might want to lower your expectations and number of brain cells.

The Merry Gentlemen finds Netflix chasing the low-hanging mistletoe of Hallmark movies, and all the hallmarks are present – from the big city girl returning to save her small town, to an ideological opposition to women having careers. Ashley’s lifelong Broadway dream is abandoned for a man (Chad Michael Murray) she has known all of 10 days, whose previous relationship with a city girl has left him with a mistrust of New Yorkers that borders on antisemitic.

The story is entirely nonsensical, never explaining what Ashley’s dance troupe ‘The Jingle Belles’ (definitely not The Rockettes for legal reasons) does the other 11 months of the year. Surely not rehearsal judging by the quality of performance we see at the start. And for a town with apparently zero gay people, there sure are a lot of buff men – all of whom have some connection to the bar that suddenly needs male strippers. Even the local barfly (Maxwell Caulfield) who literally just drinks beer all day turns out to be wreath body ready.

But again, no one was expecting logic from this flimsy Christmas-Magic Mike, even though the most festive thing about it is Beth Broderick’s frozen face – though Ashley’s hair makes the film less Sabrina the Teenage Witch and more The Worst Wig.

All that being said, the movie’s breezy tone and clear motivations easily beat the other two festive Netflix romcoms doing the rounds – namely the Lindsay Lohan Meet the Parents rip-off Our Little Secret; and Hot Frosty, a literally unwatchable creepfest about a sexy snowman, which they should have called Wanking in the Air.