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The Apprentice is a TV dinosaur — so why are we still watching?
IN THIS AGE of faux-humility and empty edicts to “be kind”, there’s something refreshing about tuning in for this year’s crop of Apprentice candidates. From the off, we’re told “bold players can win big”, which might explain the laugh-out-loud proclamations from these 18 personalities, none entirely backward at coming forward. “I didn’t come here to make friends,” says one. “I have an extremely high IQ, I have an extremely high bench press, and to top it off, I’m quite good [what?!] on the eye,” says another. (This individual has proved less good on social media, where his comments have made it fortunate for the BBC that Lord Sugar fired him before they had to. I digress.)
Only ten short minutes into this latest series, it was clearly business as usual, with the girls smiling at each other like polite assassins and the blokes shouting at one another, “We don’t have a plan!” These characters, taking chunks out of each other while pouting, belong to a bygone age of TV, from before the Bake Off tent ruined it all with gentle camaraderie, and unblinking, gladiatorial competition went the way of X Factor and Kitchen Nightmares.
But if the human dynamic belongs to another era, the tasks are positively prehistoric. Week one saw the boys trying to keep straight faces while marketing a Highland fling day for £450. The following episode saw a dozen “entrepreneurial brains” make an unholy mess of mini-cheesecakes by adding avocado and dragon fruit. None of this would stick in my craw, except the series began with a dolorous voice-over reminding us that we’re “living in a time of economic uncertainty”, something clearly shoe-horned in by producers trying to square the circle between the fancy folk on screen and ordinary folk watching at home.
Read the room, people! Why don’t they get the two groups to fix the Health Service? Body Shop? The BBC? The only thing to make such privilege forgivable is how it’s countered by both teams’ ineptitude.
Clearly, I’m missing the point. Despite or more probably because of such nonsense, The Apprentice remains one of the BBC’s perennial heavy hitters, with its non-changing format, from Sugar’s capacity to kill on arrival one of his scripted ad-libs, to the reality check that is Interviews Week.
Some faces have changed. I miss Claude Littner and Nick Hewer. First winner Tim Campbell is now one of the henchmen, which reminds me of when someone
