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Living with the Enemy

Can a gay couple and an Anglican minister learn more about each others' views with Reality cameras following them for 10 days?

2014-08-27_2059Frankly it’s difficult not to be reminded of Go Back To Where You Came From while viewing Living with the Enemy. Both are SBS documentaries that ask opinionated individuals to walk a mile in the others’ shoes. While Go Back immersed its participants in a frontline experience of seeking asylum, Living with the Enemy asks polar opposites to live with one another for 10 days.

The first episode centres around Same Sex Marriage, bound to be a conversation starter. Gregory and Michael are described as gay activists and passionate atheists who are engaged to be married. Politics aside, they’re not your average gay community poster couple: they are approaching middle age and they’re both hirsute. Sure enough they are partnered, so to speak, with a conservative Anglican minister, David, who opposes same sex marriage. While David welcomes Gregory and Michael to live with his family for five days, he also insists they live in a caravan in the front yard. Awkwarddddd.

Minister David turns to the Bible for scriptural support, reading teachings that endorse his position but which aggravate Gregory and Michael. Despite apparent intentions to understand his viewpoint, they’re getting hot under the collar. The Bible, they insist, bears no relevance to their real world.

They even attend a church service, helping to put religious leaflets on chairs, before being forced to endure a sermon from David about the Church’s position on homosexuality. Later they confront him on his narrow views and suggest that he hasn’t attempted to understand theirs. The show has made plenty of its conflict, artfully negotiated through Reality constructs.

The second half of the episode sees David immersed into the lives of Gregory and Michael who, as it so happens, are getting married in NZ in 2 days time (NB: the original casting pitch did ask for gay couples who were about to get married). Despite such open hostility, David is invited to attend as a guest, and he obliges.

In New Zealand David becomes the black sheep, the party guest who doesn’t try to play along. Family and friends try to persuade his views, which is an uphill battle. Back home in Melbourne our couple welcome him to their guest room (their semi-naked artwork is eye catching, but at least there’s no caravan) and even invite him to march with them in the Pride March.

It’s hard to know why a couple would choose to have their wedding day so conspicuous by a guest who objects to their union. I can only presume they believe the cause, of showing how important it is to affect change, outweighs such concerns. If so, more power to them.

The show is shot cheap and cheerful, with none of the production values that accompany Reality shows such as The Bachelor or MasterChef. But while it zeros in on the points of difference -rather than the points of agreement- between its participants, it lacks the insight of Go Back. Why is David’s family so edited out of the story when they are living under the same roof?

As the title suggests, this is a clever premise and I suspect episodes will ebb and flow with their level of engagement according to the topic and the casting. Upcoming topics include a devout Muslim couple living with an Aussie ‘patriot,’ a former ‘boat person’ living with a woman who wants him deported. and a gun-obsessed hunter living with a vegan animal liberationist.

There’s certainly food for thought for any SBS viewer.

Living with the Enemy airs 8.30pm Wednesday on SBS ONE.

4 Responses

  1. Reminds me a bit of Wife Swap who seemed to like putting polar opposites together. One ep I recall they had a family of hunters/meat eaters swap wives with a vegan family (even their poor cat was vegan!).

  2. I’ve been looking forward to this show and this episode in particular. Didn’t the Minister dude appear on The Project ages ago as a guest panelist.

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