In a time when neo-conservative tendencies in gender representations are acquiring more and more popularity in the media worldwide – and the domain of humour is certainly no exception (e.g. the US show The Talk) – are there parallel trends to be detected in countries where feminism never has received widespread recognition, as in the case of Russia? What can we learn about gender stereotypes from contemporary Russian infotainment TV shows? This paper will explore these questions by studying two popular shows, Projectorparishilton (“The Paris Hilton’ Projector”) and Devchata (“The Girls”). These weekly ironic-analytical programmes are broadcast prime time on the national channels Channel One and Rossiya-1 and somewhat resembling the format of programmes like Loose Women and The View. With its four male anchors, Projectorparishilton aimed to attract a younger and more progressive audience of both genders and from the beginning ignored any specific gender orientation. By contrast, Devchata – with its female anchors – was explicitly launched with a female audience as their target group, producing a type of humour recognized by essentialists as “female”.Applying a critical perspective, we study verbal and non-verbal constituents of the programmes (including music, gestures, etc.), the interior of the studio, the appearance, behaviour (and jokes!) of the anchors, in order to study how gender, age, culture and nationality are encoded/signified. Based on Laura Mulvey’s term “male gaze”, we introduce the notion of “male humour”, which is implicit not only in the way the anchors appear as subjects and objects of jokes; but also in the position taken by the viewer, regardless of gender. At heart, we question the gendered nature of humour in general and the creation of “women’s space” in the media, which in fact is a reinforcement of traditional gender (and other) stereotypes.