The Apprentice review: This hoary old cliche of a show marks its 20th birthday by mixing AI with Austen
To paraphrase noted business tycoon Jane Austen, “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a business person in possession of a slot on The Apprentice must be in want of a brain”.
It's a hoary old cliché – something The Apprentice (BBC1, Thurs, 9pm) is full of, not least the walking, talking, Cockney homily-spouting hoary old cliché himself, Lord Sugar – but the first episode of a new series amply illustrated the point.
With the budget clearly increased for this run, the 20th edition of the formerly ground-breaking reality business show, perma-grumpy Lord Sugar sent the 20 – yes, 20 – candidates off to Hong Kong.
There, they were tasked with tracking down nine items only a madman would put on their shopping list, and negotiate the best price for them.
These being Apprentice candidates, and with that Austen quote ringing in our ears, they showed little to no aptitude for organisation, co-ordination or negotiation.
Off they went, losing their drivers, taking trams for no reason and buying the wrong things. Then they paid scant regard to deadlines and by the time they all appeared in Lord Sugar's Blofeld-esque Hong Kong boardroom in the sky, you could clearly see that multiple candidates were doomed.
Over on the companion show The Apprentice: Unfinished Business (BBC2, Thurs, 10.05pm), host Angela Scanlon made the point that much had changed over the last 20 years.
“Since the show started, there's been eight Prime Ministers. It was also pre-smartphone, pre-Instagram, pre-side hustle,” she said. “It's basically an historical drama by this point.”
How Austen.
But she also forgot two other things.
Firstly, that companion shows are now 'visualised podcasts', which any sane person would call 'TV programmes with visible microphones'.
Secondly, that AI was merely science-fiction 20 years ago, whereas now we're suspicious of everything we see, in case it's an artificially intelligent hallucination.
And unfortunately, you can't help thinking that this latest batch of brainless candidates have been created by Grok.
Their faces gleam from the sheen-inducing, flaw-reducing effects of a thousand moisturisers, while their introductory boasts – always off the scale on the cringe-o-meter – have now become parodies of the 19 previous series.
“My first car was a Tesla. I've recently upgraded to a Porsche,” says one. “I guess if you've got it, you've got it, haven't you?”
To which you can only shrug and think “well, whatever ‘it’ is, I don't want it”.
Another tells us: “I'm a fiery, sassy, chilli pepper pocket rocket. I've got the brains to match the beauty, and the other candidates had better be warned.”
All of which are certainly words, but don't make much sense in the business context.
But then, you remember that this is The Apprentice, and it always follows a format. We know that when Lord Sugar tells the candidates “just because we've been doing this a while, it doesn't mean you know what's coming next”, he doesn't mean it.
The tasks will be set up for the candidates to fail, they'll look like dolts and fools for 10 weeks, and then the remaining five will have inspirational back stories and actually turn out to be real people with hopes, ideas and actual, functioning brains.
In short, it's eight weeks of Pride and Prejudice with very little Persuasion, followed by two weeks of Sense and Sensibility. But your brain would be better off if you pick up a book.