Reviews of Episode one 7/10/10

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Reviews of Episode one 7/10/10

Post by Flossie »

he Apprentice

BBC One

It is always so much more about the firing than the hiring and, this time, The Apprentice comes with an added gimmick: some of the candidates come to Lord Sugar pre-fired, a little bonus courtesy of the recession. Pleading for his life in the boardroom, Alex, whose disappointing night mixing Britain’s least meat-filled sausages (or “Britain’s Best Bangers” as he preferred to call them) had belied his earlier claims to be a foodie, announced he had once worked for “one of Britain’s top entrepreneurs”. “Let you go, though,” observed Lord Sugar sardonically.

Dan, leader of the losing team, was also on nodding terms with Kipling’s two imposters. The 34-year-old sales director had made £2.5 million and managed to lose just about all of it. Sugar pointed this out too, stung by Dan’s daring to call himself an “entrepreneur”. Dan was something else, namely a boss of whom no one had a good word to say. His team, hilariously misnamed Synergy, called him “thuggish”, “awful”, and “bullying”. His management style was “I’ll lead the team; you’ll do all the work”, and that’s a direct quote. Even Sugar had to tell him to sit up straight, which is never a good sign. Dan, however, thought his team should be “f***ing glad” he had nominated himself leader. Sipping hemlock in the losers’ café, they did not look so sure. Yet Dan did show decisiveness, when Sugar asked which of the two Synergists he had hauled into the arse-kicking cubicle with him should go, he replied “both”.

That left Sugar with no choice. The only trouble with sacking Dan was that it leaves Stuart to fight another day. Stuart, or, as he styles himself, “Stuart Baggs, the brand” already has a flash sports car and a house in the country, or so he told us in the section of the show where candidates are encouraged to boast shamelessly. “Where’s my glass ceiling?” Search me, but I could see the glass door through which he will shortly be kicked. The only question is whether the gobby Su Pollard lookalike, Melissa, the one who thinks she is at the top of her game and unbeatable, goes before or after. Probably after. The Brand is so irritating that not even his extreme youth will get him off. Last night he took out an invisible calculator, tapped it vigorously, and worked out that Dan had made, puzzled look, no sausages at all. He also flourished all the nerve in the world. Were he to win, he told Sugar, and were he to fail to make back his £100,000 salary ten fold, he would return it. This no quibbles, money-back guarantee moved Sugar, but only to laughter.

The Apprentice, now in its sixth series, misses out on a fifth star only because we so miss Margaret, off studying civilisations even older than Amstrad. Her successor spy Karren Brady made some acute observations about the boys’ intolerable testosterone levels but she doesn’t wither my googies in the same way Mountford did. Otherwise, the show is in good nick (as is Nick Hewer, whom God preserve). Making and selling sausages was a splendidly humiliating first task. Getting them to do it while sleep deprived almost created a new reality genre right there and then. About the night’s one hiring — Dara O’Briain, as a replacement for Adrian Chiles on The Apprentice: You’re Fired — deadlines preclude my commenting yet. But, believe me, I’m at the top of my game, and I shall.

Actually, it is Times readers who are, as ever, on top of their game. Yesterday, reviewing Community, I wondered where I had heard the line “you look like Elizabeth Shue” originally. Susan Fell e-mailed to say it was from Steve Coogan’s Hamlet 2. Now there’s erudition for you.

andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk
Last edited by Flossie on Thu Oct 14, 2010 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Flossie »

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Post by Flossie »

Anita Shah's ( former Apprentice candidate ) view

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... rdict.html
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Post by Flossie »

Telegraph's review

Hilarious and witty, and they don't like Stuart!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan ... -task.html
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Re: The Times review of the Apprentice 7/10/10

Post by Triggers »

Flossie wrote:


The Apprentice, now in its sixth series, misses out on a fifth star only because we so miss Margaret, off studying civilisations even older than Amstrad. Her successor spy Karren Brady made some acute observations about the boys’ intolerable testosterone levels but she doesn’t wither my googies in the same way Mountford did. Otherwise, the show is in good nick (as is Nick Hewer, whom God preserve).

andrew.billen@thetimes.co.uk
So far I like Karen Brady, but I do miss Margaret - boy could she roll her eyes :D
I have a real fondness, verging on a difficult to explain - please don't make me - sort of crush on Nick :o It might be a posh, intelligent, older man kinda thing...or something...I dunno....wish I hadn't posted it out loud now... :red:
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Post by Flossie »

*Makes a hardcopy of Trigg's post*
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Post by Triggers »

Flossie wrote:*Makes a hardcopy of Trigg's post*

8-D You devil! :red:
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