The Apprentice (UK) Series 19
Week 1 - Can I be bothered?
I suspect the short answer to that question is: NO.
A few years back - when I had a proper job - I did a weekly post on the companies’ message-board, after the screening of each episode. That was back in 2019 - Series 15. It was fun. And the reason it was fun, was because there were some “interesting” candidates that year. We had
Lottie Lion - librarian. She was pretty much hated by all of the other candidates. She was bossy, opinionated, confrontational, sarcastic, snotty and - yeah - I loved her. I’ve always suspected there’s a spy in the camp and there’s no other explanation for Lottie. I mean… come on! “Lottie Lion” isn’t a real name, is it? And librarian? See for yourself:
Thomas Skinner - pillow salesman. Who said: “I don’t plan - I just do everything on impulse. When I plan, I always get it wrong.” The thing is: he always got it wrong when he didn’t plan, too. But what he did have was, (completely unfounded), confidence and enough enthusiasm to convince his team-mates: “yeah - whatever Thomas says - we’ll do that”. He created a cult of positivity, when there should have been a significant amount of fear and uncertainty. His team would stride into the boardroom on a high, and invariably end up in The Bridge Cafe, pondering what went wrong. And they never seemed to figure out… listening to Thomas was what went wrong.
But enough of the heady days of Series 15. Back to the here and now. It’s been getting progressively worse every year and Series 19 looks like they’ve reached ground zero. They’ve got a bunch of candidates who couldn’t get over the bar if it was lying on the ground. I don’t know how they pick them. They were all, mildly unlikeable - but not unlikeable enough to make them interesting. If I was Lord Sugar, I’d fire them all in week one and save myself £250K. And then I’d fire the producers/researchers who thought it was a good idea to pick a bunch of conceited, clueless, devoid of charisma, hopeless chumps.
So… the task for week 1 was to go to Austria and sell a tour. I’m going to keep this brief: one team was rubbish and the other team was completely fucking useless. Lord Sugar, quite rightly, fired a girl, (can’t be bothered to find out her name), who seemed to have zero interest in the task. In fact didn’t seem at all interested in even being there.
I’ll watch week 2, in the vain hope of seeing signs of life. But I’m not hopeful, and can’t see myself sticking out the whole series. The only thing that might keep me going is Karen’s raised eyebrow and sarcastic commentary and quips.