Dating the Enemy, Monday 10.35pm, ITV1
Posted by Tom Murphy
Think you've seen it all? Well, here's something new and exciting. Over the next few nights, ITV's Dating the Enemy shows what happens when totally incompatible couples are sent on a series of "dates". Where do they get their ideas from?
In the series opener, we met singleton Laurie and simpleton Leon (not pictured). She's clearly a bit posh and is about to start an MA in feminism and international relations. He claims not to be posh (despite coming from Worcester) and declares gleefully that “I'm not sexist. I like women. I just think they're not as intelligent and capable of achieving things".
The futile four-day bickerfest kicks off with Laurie leading the cretinous 29-year-old mummy's boy into a dinner party with 11 of her shiny-faced right-on friends. It's such a transparent ambush that you almost feel sorry for the moron, until he starts chuntering on about the evils of feminism.
The next day, Laurie drags Leon to the Blenheim horse trials. Once again, you desperately want to sympathise with the idiot man-child, until he reveals that he finds horses “boring” and “pointless” - unless, of course, they're “trampling all over suffragettes”. And so on.
Later, Leon hauls Laurie back to the mean streets of Worcester. At a working men's club that seems to have just hosted a BNP coffee morning, Leon instructs her to sit silently in the corner while he plays snooker with his mate Paul. While Laurie's moved to tears of righteous anger, Leon dismisses her complaints as “posh background noise”.
By the final day, the producers have clearly nudged them towards some sort of improbable reconciliation. Leon issues a stilted and half-hearted apology for his behaviour the previous evening, and Laurie responds with an equally unlikely acknowledgement that Leon might just be misguided, rather than an out-and-out knobsack who should be dropped down a lift shaft.
Leon's unconvincing pledge that he'll maybe try to reconsider some of his views on the world isn't enough to convince Laurie. She never wants to see him again, and he has to look a bit wounded in his final close-up.
And there you go. An utterly pointless programme, with a format that's thinner than Jude Law's barnet. The whole thing could have been covered in 90 seconds, but was instead dragged out over 40 stolen minutes that I'll never get back again. Still, you never know – maybe the rest of the series will turn out radically different...
SEE ALSO
Paxman slams UK's 'barbarian' TV viewers >>
VIDEO: Diversity reflect on BGT victory >>
The rest of the latest documentaries >>
I Don't know if I should admit to Knowing Leon but I give him 10 out of 10 for courage. He came in the club the night after the show and took some justifible stick and took it on the chin.
When I left I shook his hand and told him, “you have got more balls than me to come in here after that display”
I have met some lads in my time but he takes the biscuit!
Posted by: Howard (Club Member) | 04 June 2009 at 10:38
Leon will do anything for attention..Doing this show is another 'poor me'!!!! You'll be single when your 60 boy.
Posted by: ver lynne | 03 June 2009 at 17:30
"Marks out of 2? I'd give her one !"
Posted by: Si | 03 June 2009 at 12:22
Courage to express his opinions? He was the biggest coward ever. A bully, living at home with his mum, unable to listen to anyone else, blindly sticking to concepts from the era of the caveman. It's nothing to do with the Thought Police - the guy was a grade A twit!
Posted by: Jon | 02 June 2009 at 15:27
So the bloke should be hung drawn and quartered for having the courage to express his own opinions? When did we all become so scared of offending the Thought Police?
Posted by: voice of reason | 02 June 2009 at 11:53
It was basically Wife Swap but for singletons instead. The guy last night was the biggest idiot I've ever seen.
Posted by: Jon | 02 June 2009 at 11:33