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Great Writing - Home > Non-Fiction > review of The Apprentice
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Non-Fiction
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| review of The Apprentice | |
| By rach | ||||||||||
| 05 May 2008 | ||||||||||
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A t.v. critics review type thingy. apologies for spelling/grammar/layout/ lack of pedantic love for punctuation etc etc : ) As Karl Marx summersaults agonizingly in his grave, The Apprentice begins its forth series. His royal shrudeness, Sir Alan Sugar, is back with a vengeance, radically declaring that he doesn’t want to hear from the sixteen apprentices that anyone is like him, since he is ‘unique’ and you would have to agree with him. Who else bought premium bonds after 1979? The man that seemingly rules that small town of London, which is centered around ‘The Gherkin’ appearing to be the only building in the capital with windows shiny enough for TV, couldn’t look more irritated with starring in the best thing on TV at the moment. Here the streets are paved with shiny black Rolls Royce’s, and with a lifestyle that includes having Myleen Klass pop round to play your piano for you, who can blame the contestants for desperately battling for a slice of the big time? There’s a part of me that wonders where the BBC have found the producers of this show, and begs why everything on TV can’t be so lovingly edited. Still, the BBC has saved us from the usual corporation branding. Rejected ideas, I imagine included Barbara Windsor and Natasha Kaplinski advising Sir Sugar, perhaps a spin off series involving Andi Peters interviewing the very efficient receptionist and Sir Alan’s yuletide guest appearance as Dr Who’s assistant. It’s nice to see the man can say ‘no’, as well as ‘you’re fired’. This years proceedings have been much the same as usual, two teams of fired up egos compete for the prize of business person of the year, which is naturally judged on who can sell fish and run the most successful laundry service, although not at the same time. However, there seems to be a slight change in the boardroom. Finally, Sir Alan appears to have been watching the show, and has noticed what he perhaps failed in the previous series’ to notice. The two faced contestants stabbing aimlessly at any kind of response to his ‘honest govner’ style of inquisition. He has realised the production team usually pick the biggest bunch of self-unaware gabbling liars they can find. And Margaret has maybe quietly suggested that not everyone with their face on national TV, their neck pinned to the chopping board that is in with a chance of earning 100,000 pounds a year would tell Sir Alan the truth. The show is decidedly better for it, Sir Alan sees through the boardroom bravado like a hawk feasting on dormice, and as you sit watching, along with the rest of the nation, you convince yourself that you really could win this series. How difficult can it be to design and sell a greeting card anyway? Well extremely difficult if you are going to sell what is in essence next weeks dustbin filler by telling the buyers at Tescos that the country is generating too much rubbish. While were on the subject, I couldn’t leave this review without a little homage to Raef, who declared, “The spoken word is my tool.” Which tool, Raef didn’t specify although I’m guessing at a chainsaw considering the way he attempted to sever through the obvious flaws of the lead balloon that was ‘Singles Day’. Raef failed to explain which language he favoured also, giving us the superb three-hour panic of ‘Apostrophegate’, deciding whether singles should be single’s, singles’ or singles. This left the audience gobsmaked at how Micheal dare ring up the editor of “The Telegraph” and The British Library only to shout at the staff when they gave different answers. Perhaps they should of informed the staff that they were completing a ‘design a greeting card’ competition were I imagine Suzie Dent herself would of dashed round in her Countdown linguist mobile declaring the existence of a new verb to ‘Raef’ (v): to believe one’s own hype, leaving the rest of the world wondering which planet you are actually from. Other gems from the series include the man who spent the best part of twenty five years training to be lawyer then decided his actual vocation in life was selling satellite systems for a successful market trader. Modestly he told the nation he had never failed in life but had got a grade B in one of his G.C.S.E’s. The nation wept. Lindi Mngaza’s taxi ride home revealed she just couldn’t understand why Sir Alan hadn’t seen how special she was. This was the woman whose specialties included offering a twenty four hour laundry tracking service for those customers of a nervous disposition who need to know at exactly what time their underpants have been spun dry. Perhaps Lindi did have a point, since the complex labeling system used by her team members failed to include some vital areas of information, such as the name of the owner, which resulted with the girls losing items, including one mans shirt. All was not lost with this unfortunate situation, since they did have the business expertise to remember to ask for a tip. Still, the program lost Simon Smith, who emerged as the love child of Brian Connolly and Bradley Walsh, too early. He will always be remembered, in my heart at least, for nodding enthusiastically when Sir Alan said, “Simon if I asked you to build me a wall you’d build me a wall.” It’s just a shame that Sir Alan is looking for someone whose talents sway towards making him money. Still, there’s a promising career for Simon at Churchill’s Car Insurance Company. As for a winner, it appears the nightmare contestants have been marked by Sir Alan this year, so far from the winner being the quiet one you never even notice until week 10, this years winner will be the person who actually turns round and verbally wipes the floor with the pretenders, Claire, who I’m hoping completely ignores Sir Alan’s advice this week so she can finally return on her broomstick with her wooden spoon to somewhere she isn’t absolutely out of her depth. Primark maybe. So, as our attentions turn towards the final and we realise poor S’r Alan is going to have to invent a job for one of these treasure hunters. I’d like to suggest a few roles; Director of Security, to ward off hostile takeover bids (Jenny with the scary smile), Head of Aromatherapy, (Lucinda who cannot stand up for herself without having an emotional breakdown), Executive in charge of relationships with Heat magazine, (Alex who was nearly a male model once and seems to be quite comfortably still in role), and Public Relations Manager with the Palace, which goes to Raef who ‘gets on’ with both Prince and pauper. Which is lucky, considering the social diversity of the dole queue.
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