Unsurprisingly, you didn’t get much black metal on UK television back in the 90s. There was no Mayhem on Top Of The Pops, no Impaled Nazarene bantering with Chris Evans, and certainly no Emperor on Frank Skinner’s sofa. In fact, save for a couple of news reports about church-burnings, the only exposure a mainstream audience got to black metal was on an infamous 1998 episode of BBC show Living With The Enemy, starring none other than Cradle Of Filth.
The premise of Living… was simple: take two individuals with polarising views and stick them together. Other episodes featured a UK aristocrat sharing his mansion with a Marxist class warrior, or a vegan activist going to live on a farm. But the most well-remembered show featured concerned Christian mother Janet Robinson, disgusted by her son Luke’s love of black metal, heading out on tour with Dani Filth’s devilish consortium.
