TV show brings together people with completely opposing views for dinner

When Virgin Media put out a call last year for guests to appear on its new show Eating With The Enemy, there was a furious social media backlash. For starters, the title was seen as triggering, the modern word for an issue that causes anything from mild upset to full-blown anxiety, but there also was criticism of the format itself.

Put simply, it’s like First Dates without the romantic aspect and, in this instance, the two people who sit down to dinner at the very least come from wildly different backgrounds, and have seemingly incompatible ways of viewing our world and the challenges facing it – homelessness, race, religion, equality, and so on.

The immediate online outrage was ironic because the entire point of the show, the makers say, is to try to return to human contact rather than tweeting for conversation, and add nuance to otherwise very monochrome debate.

In order to put shape on the discussions, the participants are furnished with questions designed to tease out their differences and their similarities. In the first episode, which airs on Wednesday at 9pm, we see drag queen Bonnie Ann Clyde meet Catholic priest Fr Joe McDonald; free-market, small-government libertarian Adam Keane meet Mattress Mick, a passionate defender of provision for the homeless and other public services; creative director Bekah Molony and Miss Bikini Ireland judge Michael Byrne discuss the differences between the sexes and the objectification of women (‘I am the guy girls want to hate but also want to bang,’ he says provocatively); and law lecturer Bashir Otukoyo debates immigration, racism and the rise of populist politics with Luke O’Connor, a member of the Irish Freedom Party (see panels).

The discussions are lively if a little frustrating, given that they are intercut with each other when, as

The Tommy Tiernan Show has so brilliantly proved, the longer-form chat, with its occasionally awkward silences and moments of genuine emotion, is more satisfying. Eating

With The Enemy, made by independent production house Animo TV (the company behind Ireland’s Fittest Family, Davy’s Toughest

Team, the Irish Who Do You Think You Are? and many other popular programmes) is a compelling watch nonetheless. Those who otherwise might never meet in person, or even interact with them on social media, get the measure of each other, with different results.

Keeping an eye on it all in the background are clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne and psychotherapist Richard Hogan, who set the questions and interpret the responses, both verbal and physical, as the chat gets under way.

Dr Coyne was also the consulting psychologist on Virgin’s recent Big Year In Big School, which followed a class of junior infants as they started their education journey, so what is the difference between how we act as children and how we grow as adults?

‘I don’t think that children develop these biases, these black and white opinions, as much as adults do,’ she says. ‘I think the difference between the two shows is that Big Year was very much about the innocence of children learning about themselves and one another, whereas with Eating With The Enemy, it’s very much about adults with preconceived ideas. It’s about the kind of biases that we naturally have as human beings, and I think they don’t start to develop until later.’

The views of our parents and friends play a significant role. ‘We all stick within our own social bubbles

THE POINT IS TO TRY TO RETURN TO HUMAN CONTACT RATHER THAN TWEETING

for that sense of safety,’ Dr Coyne says.

‘In terms of learned opinions, as you grow up, you do start to digest and take in your parents’ views and, very often, those might be the views of their own parents.

‘Then your own experience also will dictate your views – somebody might have a very strong opinion about a certain thing because they’ve gone through it themselves. There are very many different reasons for opinions but a lot of them are learned.

‘When something affects us, we decide to find meaning out of it and sometimes we will join with likeminded people. That’s why Facebook support groups, all these movements, can be a really good thing. But social media also feeds you information that’s tailored to you. Most of us realise that, but maybe some don’t.’

On all social platforms, we gravitate towards those who are like us,

ON SOCIAL MEDIA WE SHRINK THE EXPERIENCES AND VIEWS WE ARE EXPOSED TO

ever shrinking the experiences and views to which we are exposed and engage with. ‘I think that’s why Eating With The Enemy is such a brilliant concept,’ Dr Coyne says. ‘We are deliberately bringing people who would never otherwise sit and have a meal face to face. Online, people just have these opinions they want to get out. They don’t have filters, they don’t have to take responsibility for their behaviour. They can just write it and press Send. When they are face to face, you have a completely different scenario, and that’s why I think this experiment was so good.’

One thing social media cannot replicate, short of a well-placed emoji, is the role a raised eyebrow or a smile can play when receiving or offering an opinion. It lacks nuance, doesn’t it?

‘Absolutely,’ Dr Coyne says. ‘Body language plays a huge role in how we communicate and I think many of us don’t necessarily realise just how much. Being face to face with someone and hearing their view, but also hearing why they have that view, immediately humanises somebody when we meet in person.’

Social media, Dr Coyne believes, can amplify frustration, not least with ourselves. ‘I think we’ve never felt so under threat,’ she says. ‘Many of us can be self-critical and that voice can get really loud, and sometimes that’s when we project outwards towards other people. I felt this programme was about the people sitting across the table becoming more conscientious human beings. Maybe they weren’t necessarily changing their points of view, but they were understanding the other person’s. For any society to function, it is crucial to actually have access to that other point of view, and to people from different backgrounds to your own. It’s really important.’

It can also be difficult to get to that point. ‘I think people are venting more because they’re feeling threatened, in a way,’ Dr Coyne explains. ‘We all have confirmation biases, where we filter out any information that doesn’t support our opinion. You just feel safer as a human being and that’s a very natural thing.

‘That’s what I liked about this show. I was there for the whole filming and I saw the conversations happen over a six-day duration at the end of November. It was incredible to see it in action. Very often we thought people were going to row more than they did, that things would get more heated.

‘There were some controversial conversations but when we meet in person, we try to get over discomfort by finding commonality. “I’m a woman, you’re a woman”, “I’m a father, you’re a father”, that sort of thing. It’s maybe half way through the conversation that they can start to air their views a bit more, and we had these curated questions so we could guide them to move on to the next topic.’ There was also a duty of care involved. Dr Coyne says that, despite the social media backlash when the show was announced, it was never the intention they would seat someone who had been abused with an abuser. Instead, the topics discussed are universal, but also often filtered through a deeply personal prism.

‘The reaction proved interesting in itself, the way people were outraged,’ Dr Coyne says. ‘Some people thought, oh, what a terrible idea to sit somebody next to someone that has completely opposing point of view. What has happened to society, like?’

■ Eating With The Enemy, Virgin Media One, 9pm on Wednesday

Bringing together those with opposing views might seem like a recipe for disaster, but as Philip Nolan found, it can lead to greater awareness