Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: What planet are our critics on?

There’s an extreme dissonance between the consumers of art and those who judge it

The second series of Mad Men has arrived on BBC4. The media has been rhapsodising about this Sixties ad-world drama since first it appeared on our screens. Fashion pages have been devoted to the ultra-debonair men and women who don't just inhale but make love to their ciggies.

The most acerbic TV critics have surrendered to the allegedly irresistible brilliance of MM. But punters remain indifferent. Last week only 242,000 people bothered to watch the first programme. The Observer critic insists this is "currently the best thing on television, not only in this but almost every other country". Like she knows.

Maybe she jokingly goes over the top, but you feel there is real disappointment that the expert is being ignored. Unlike many others, I do believe in media proficiency and knowledge and have little time for the sleepless in Blogland who think they always know better than those who do. Much "citizen journalism" is garbage which others have to clean up. But when there is such extreme dissonance between consumers and intermediaries, one does wonder what the latter are up to.

What critics write seriously influences the choices made by judges at the biggest award ceremonies to honour the best in film, books, theatre and art. Who dares to hold them to account? I think, for example, that Kate Winslet is undoubtedly a great actor, but that in The Reader she was beautifully unconvincing, if you see what I mean. Most film critics are male, and most ( with some interesting exceptions) were bowled over.

Were they carried away watching her nude, making love and in a bath? Their delirious approval has led to bigger accolades. Is this not what one critic describes as "middlebrow, sentimental, erotic fantasy"? The same happened with Lost in Translation. Male critics so wanted Scarlett Johanssen's mouth and body that they couldn't see how unfairly Japan and the Japanese were shown.

In The Reader, the Kate factor has pushed away dead-serious questions. The pitiless Nazi guard she plays was illiterate and then learns to read – her deliverance. Art is not forgiveness, cannot be invoked as the ultimate redemption. Remember that leading Nazis were intellectuals and patrons of great music and painting.

Baffling too is the praised heaped on Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky, a tedious Pollyana movie that made me want to run over the chirpy heroine. Many other ordinary viewers agree that this is far from Leigh's finest film but their reservations are drowned out by the chorus of critical acclaim.

For critics, Slumdog Millionaire was a "feelgood film", never mind the torture, murder, rape, child abuse, caste violence, corruption and unbearable poverty. Like millions of others, I loved every minute because it was hard and real, the happy ending notwithstanding. And it is not a "British film" either. The brilliant director and some crew and star are Brits, but the film was financed by the UK and US, most of the cast were Indian, as was A R Rahman who wrote the score, and Vikas Swarap whose novel it was based on. So not even accurate then.

Richard Corliss, a Time magazine critic, asked last year: "Do film critics know anything? ...in fact we are essentially passing notes to one another, admiring our connoisseurship at the risk of ignoring the vast audience that sees movies and the smaller one that reads us." The man deserves an Oscar for unmasking the herd instincts of his own profession.

Theatre critics are similarly denuded of their self-importance by A A Gill (food and TV critic): "Those creeping things... a moribund, detached lot, too often bereft of elan, panache or the mildest stylistic polish" who give us "uniform, dark sogginess". Gill is our most gifted and acutely observant scribe, though he too sometimes inhabits a planet most of us cannot visit, even in our thoughts. And he does damn with the certainty of a fiery evangelical.

Some contemporary critics are more perceptive than Bernard Levin or Kenneth Tynan, revered because they are dead. But this is undoubtedly a discipline that draws men who are mean and stupid. I saw Steven Berkoff's production of On the Waterfront in Edinburgh, so extraordinary that I turned to the grumpy man sitting near me to share a bit of the elation. He said it was as bad as he expected it to be, that a sixth form would be embarrassed to put it on and that he was a critic. It is now in the West End – no thanks to the lumpen custodian of good art.

Art criticism is arguably even more self-regarding. Oh the snobbery, the sniffiness, the insufferable lot who believe they know it all. At the last Turner Prize bash, I just didn't get the shortlisted entries. Social death of course to confess bewilderment and innocence. Two well known critics had nothing to give but practised contempt. Did they have a clue themselves? Louise Jury, previously of this stable, patiently explained – a rare thing. I still disagreed with two of the choices made by those who were born to elevate and dismiss.

Book criticism is different because editors invite in reviewers from all professions. This makes the business inherently democratic, although choices for review are still controlled by a small cabal. The book world is more argumentative and fairer than other cultural industries, where exclusive magic circles pass judgement based on self-limited life experiences.

Almost all critics in this country are male, white and from Oxbridge. They tend not to disagree too much, too often. Ironically it is when they break ranks that we punters are best served.

It is happening today over the provocative and un-PC England People Very Nice at the National Theatre – about immigrants coming into the East End of London. Some critics have described it as "Bernard Manning humour". Others praise it as a bravura production. Well-known black and Asian individuals I saw quoted were also divided.

Excitement is mounting and I predict this play will pull in more diverse audiences than we usually see at the National. As one Asian British playwright said to me: "It is the doorkeepers who make and break films, plays, exhibitions, programmes all that. When they open up or stop acting like a defence force, creativity will really bloom." With many different flowers one hopes.