The fact that a Radio Times poll found the UK's favourite Christmas film to be Love, Actually probably either delighted or appalled you.

Few films are as Marmitey in their effect; for every soft-hearted soul who makes an annual Christmas date with it - go on, hands up who did so over the Yuletide period - there's some cynic to whom it's "the apex of cynically vacant faux-motional cash-grab garbage cinema" (to quote a much-shared savaging from Jezebel.com).

What was interesting about the poll result isn't so much that It's a Wonderful Life or Elf or Die Hard are better films (OF COURSE THEY ARE), so much as that the genre to which Love, Actually belongs has been so moribund of late.

Where have all the romcoms gone? And if people still love them enough to hold even the poor ones in enduring esteem, why have they gone?

Amid film genres, the romantic comedy used to be a power player. It was where big stars broke out - but also where they stayed, for years. Think of the box office power players who made their names partly or wholly as romcom queens. Julia Roberts. Cameron Diaz. Sandra Bullock. Reese Witherspoon. Renée Zellweger. Meg Ryan, of course (whether she ever proved herself in any other genre is debatable, although personally I'm a staunch fan of 2003's sad, weird, sexy In the Cut).

And it's not just about the leading ladies: the biggest male stars of their eras, from Clark Gable and Cary Grant to Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Will Smith and George Clooney have all recognised that serious career advancement could come from light romantic fare.

Until now. Now we have actors plainly custom-built for sparky, rapid-fire romcom roles - Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds - instead having to do ponderous thinky dramas or pour themselves into uncomfortable superhero outfits in order to keep themselves on the A-list.

It's a straight-up tragedy for Emma Stone that her career took off just as the romcom largely slid out of view. Plainly this born romcom queen should be experiencing a romantic misunderstanding near a New York landmark at Christmas; instead, her upcoming roles include a seventeenth century baroness and Cruella De Vil.

Why is Rachel McAdams always playing girlfriends and sidekicks? Maybe because her perfect leading roles all exist in an alternative universe where Nora Ephron never died. And what about Taye Diggs? Won't somebody think of Taye Diggs? If you're Taye Diggs, then you're basically too gorgeous, graceful and charming to be convincing in any genre other than romcom. A movie culture fixated on dingy war allegories and violent comic books is no place for Taye Diggs. The man needs meet-cutes, fantasy dance sequences and happy endings in order to thrive.

Romantic comedies still get made, of course. Bridget Jones's Baby made it out into the world in 2016 and duly dominated the UK box office for a period of months (though it found markedly less love in the US). Emma Stone's current critical hit, La La Land, for which she's Oscar-tipped, is a romcom of sorts; so was 2011's Crazy Stupid Love, which also teamed her with Ryan Gosling. The Silver Linings Playbook, released in 2012, managed to achieve both fluffy romcom charm and serious critical kudos.

Still, it's a dwindling list. The perky, wordy, relationship-driven movie is no longer where major investors want to bank their dollars; look to sequels, spin-offs and franchises for that.

All to the good, some might say. Who needs more beautiful people wandering around improbably large apartments obsessing about when other beautiful people are going to call them back? But even if the romcom isn't your particular cup of tea, its relative demise is revealing of a few significant shifts.

The importance of international markets is one: easier to sell CGI-led fantasy spectacle all over the world, than to translate intricate conversations and culturally-specific dating habits. Then there's tie-in marketing: the biggest movies now come with vast swathes of associated money-spinning product, and while a When Harry Met Sally computer game might arguably be pretty great, multi-media tie-ins aren't really part of the romcom offering.

Then there's the fact that those big movies now tend to be really, really BIG. That is to say that the mid-budget, adult-orientated feature films that were prevalent in the 1980s and 90s have all but vanished, pushed out by the polarisation of a market that now expects films to be made either for an indie pittance, or the sort of billion-nudging obscenity of a budget normalised by the likes of James Cameron.

"Something happened," Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner told Flavorwire.com in 2014, "that nobody can make a movie between $500,000 and $80 million. That can't be possible."

The resurgence of the prestige television drama series has offered Weiner, and other writers and directors like Lena Dunham, Jill Soloway and Shonda Rhimes, the chance to work with decent budgets, without overbearing studio execs and without necessarily having to blow anything up.

Even television, however, has tended towards pretty murky and moody places in recent years. If you don't like thumping doses of torture, murder and general depravity with your entertainment, it can be hard to find a show that suits. Emotion-driven, touchy-feely fare like Brothers and Sisters, Six Feet Under and Ally McBeal is a long time gone, and hasn't really been replaced.

The fact that the mediocre but heartfelt US series This is Us proved a big hit over the past year would seem like an indicator that there's an audience out there that hungers for a bit more human connectedness in its drama. A female audience? Well, maybe.

The fact that both TV and movies seem to have shifted ever further away from the lived realities of love and family, towards fantasies of vengeance and violence, is often seen as further proof of its endemic preoccupation with the interests of the male of the species, particularly its adolescent incarnation.

But the fact is that just as there are women who adore Game of Thrones and are super-psyched for Episode VIII, so there are men who miss Sex and the City and wonder when Drew Barrymore's going to direct again. And plenty of people who swing both ways. It's not necessarily a matter of gender, but one of a much-missed genre.

So whether you love Love Actually or actually loathe it, here's to the romcom. May all those X-Men, Power Rangers, Defenders of this and Avengers of that make space for it to flourish again some day soon.

Hannah McGill is a writer, critic and broadcaster based in Edinburgh. She writes for Scotland on Sunday, Sight and Sound, The Independent and The Times among other outlets. From 2006 to 2010 she was the artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.