It’s time for The Apprentice to end ...Middle East

This review contains spoilers

I’m an Apprentice apologist. Yes, it’s silly, self-important and heavily manipulated – the candidates are clearly set up to fail. But if you’re judging it as a personality-led reality show – at times even a comedy – rather than a straight business competition – it’s one of the funniest, silliest series on television. But the opening episode of this 19th series tests even my patience.  

According to the BBC, this is the “most demanding series yet”. Turns out they mean for us watching, not those vying for Lord Alan Sugar’s cash. 

It starts, as The Apprentice always does, with this year’s suited and booted candidates pulling their tiny suitcases through London, mouthing off about how they’re the toughest businessperson who have ever walked the planet.

“The level of competitiveness I have is disgusting,” boasts meal prep entrepreneur and competitive bodybuilder Mia. “I am the human equivalent of a tank.” So far, so familiar. 

Next, the 18 fresh faces pile into the boardroom to meet their overlord and potential business partner Lord Sugar for the first time. He duly launches into his pre-written jokes, telling his candidates that their CVs have “got more rubbish in them than the Thames”. They all laugh along dutifully, but by this point I’m starting to get a bit bored.  

The Apprentice past winners - where are they now?

When Lord Sugar announces the first task will be to sell a tour to, er, tourists in Austria, I can’t help but groan. Last year we had to watch them traipse up to the Scottish Highlands to flog tours, in 2023, they did the same thing in Antigua. Invariably, the candidates failed to sell tickets, forgot their facts and disappointed their customers. Shock horror, the exact same thing happens in Innsbruck.  

Repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a sign of madness. The Apprentice has been getting panned for years yet is still peddling out identical episodes. 

There is one change this year, although it’s a dismal attempt to shake things up. Rather than the usual girls vs boys teams, Lord Sugar mixes them up from the very beginning. It has no real bearing on the task at hand and, worse, it makes it hard to track who is on what team – especially since there seems to be no team names either. The writing is on the wall: the producers have finally run out of ideas. 

Anyway, one team – led by Emma, who wants to “redefine coffee culture” – is tasked with creating a tour atop a glacier, promising stunning views of the Dolomites. The other team, under the management of pizzeria owner Anisa, must flog an e-bike ride through a forest complete with a lesson about… honey. No prizes for guessing who manages to sell the most tickets. 

With the forest sub-team trying to sell bike ride tickets to a frail 97-year-old and relying on games of rock, paper, scissors to secure higher prices with customers (which they inevitably lose), it’s no surprise they end up making a loss. After some rather dull deliberations, Lord Sugar sends Emma R home first, having concluded that she contributed a grand total of nothing to the task.  

Usually, I’m the first to defend The Apprentice, but this episode does nothing to help my case that it still deserves its place on TV. Repetitive, derivative and utterly out of touch with the modern world of work (at one point Lord Sugar takes the mick out of a candidate for taking a two-hour lunch: “next you’ll be asking me to work from home!”), I’m starting to think that it’s time The Apprentice handed in its resignation. 

‘The Apprentice’ continues next Thursday at 9pm on BBC One

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