Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Funny Business
SRALAN! Sport Relief Does The Apprentice, BBC1, 9.00pm Labels: BBC One, BBC1, charity, Sport Relief Does The Apprentice, The Apprentice, TV
We are sooooooo excited about this we can barely contain ourselves. In the name of Sport Relief (we were going to put call '0800 whatever' here, but the BBC website doesn't appear to have a number for the donation hotline on yet), ten celebrities get to play business with Sralan Sugar and get their egos well and truly deflated by Nick and Margaret in the process, before one of them, presumably during Friday night's telethon extravanganza, gets fired.
They'll have to go something to beat last year's stonking Comic Relief Does the Apprentice which featured Rupert Everett throwing a hissy fit and leaving, Trinny Woodall calling the whole world to help out, Cheryl Tweedy Cole being ruddy marvellous and Sralan struggling to only choose one to fire out of Piers Morgan and Alistair Campbell. But the format is always telly gold, so we are hoping for an early highlight of 2008 here.
The line-up this year may not be *quite* as star-studded as last, but it should still be entertaining. The boys' team consists of reality TV veterans Phil Tuffnell and Hardeep Singh Koli (who was ROBBED by Matt Dawson in Celebrity Masterchef), former Sun man Kelvin Mackenzie, slightly faded TV presenter Nick Hancock and Cheeky-Girl-lover and MP Lembit Opik.
The girls' team consists of token telly businesswoman Jacqueline Gould (we only hope Sralan will give her a bit of a ribbing over ITV's late, unlamented, begging show, Fortune), former George Clooney flame (and, er, model?) Lisa Snowdon, Claire Balding (who is always a little school-teacher ish and therefore will rule at this kind of thing) and LC faves Louise Redknapp and Kirstie Allsop (somewhat unexpected of Channel 4 to let her do this when they apparently have always refused permission for her to do Strictly Come Dancing, according to some Kirstie interview we read once. Maybe we should start a Facebook group for her or something).
Going on those team line-ups, we assume that the boys do not have a hope in hell.
By Rad :: Post link
:: 
::
0 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Business as usual
ANOTHER CHANCE! The Apprentice, Dave, 9.00pm Labels: Dave, The Apprentice, TV
We're still not entirely convinced by the logic of rebranding your channel as "Dave", you know. We follow the reasoning behind it (even if it is alarmingly reminiscent of those "everybody knows a bloke like Mickey" shampoo adverts), but we can't help thinking that it's one of those ideas that sounds brilliant in a brainstorming session where a bunch of marketing and brand executives have been sweating it out for the best part of a morning, but in the cold harsh light of day it just seems a bit...silly? And as anyone who's ever encountered a drunk person knows, there are few things worse than someone you barely know claiming to be your best friend, which is sort of what this is doing. But we'll see.
We don't generally make a habit of promoting repeats on the front page (although perhaps we should, because for once we might actually have a clue what we're talking about), but we'll make an exception here because UKTV Dave is showing the first series of The Apprentice from the very beginning. And as people who barely caught the first series, but got hooked on the second two, we are very excited indeed by this, and we feel certain we can't be alone.
Admittedly it will be lacking in some degree of tension since we all know who wins (spoiler alert: IT'S TIM), but for those of us who were a bit slow off the mark the first time around, it'll be a good chance to make up for lost time. Also, we really really want to see the QVC episode again, which was about the only episode we did catch first time around, and OH DEAR GOD THAT COAT. We believe the first task involves the selling of flowers pitting Saira against Tim. Call us psychic, but we don't think it'll be the last time that happens.
By Steve :: Post link
:: ::
0 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
A spoonful of Sugar
HIRED! The Apprentice, BBC1, 9.00pm Labels: BBC1, reality TV, The Apprentice, TV
Every so often, we swear we can still hear an echoed cry of "what the fucking fuck?" bouncing around our living room walls, which was something akin to our response during last week's episode when Katie apparently developed a heart of some kind and realised that she couldn't possibly leave her children to go and work for Sralan Sugar, thereby "stepping down" from the interview process. You know, the same children that she'd repeatedly suggested quite strongly that she didn't really give a flying Fauntleroy about roughly ten minutes previously. We cried bullshit, and if Tre's exit interview is anything to go by, we're not wrong. Then again, Tre thinks he has offices in 15 countries across the world, so who knows what's true anymore, eh?
Anyway: this is it, bitches. After tonight, either Kristina Grimes or Simon Ambrose will be The Apprentice, and will have an extremely glamorous job along the lines of recycling old office supplies in Brentwood, the lucky lucky things. The smart money would seem to be on Kristina, on the grounds that she's displayed such qualities as resourcefulness and competence (swearing on air during the teleshopping task notwithstanding), rather than on Simon, who rather went to pieces over the past few weeks, who unintentionally draws attention to his penis on live television and turns into a six-year-old girl during interviews, but who looks nice answering the phone in his pants. But that's the thing with this show, because not many of us were betting on Michelle this time last year, and look what happened.
This year's final task is a little more low-key than previous years: Kristina and Simon are asked to come up with suggestions for what Sralan might want to do with the ground he'll obtain when he demolishes a building that he's just bought on London's South Bank, and present their ideas to a crowd of 100 property experts (dear show: please let one of them be Sarah Beeny). It's not quite as dramatically satisfying as the gala party event from last year, but it probably makes more sense from a "who's most likely to be better at the actual job" perspective. So, who'll win? Who knows? That's half the fun. Team Kristina! (Now watch as Simon romps to victory, since we always get these things wrong.)
By Steve :: Post link
:: ::
0 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
The art of war
BUSINESS! The Apprentice, BBC1, 9.00pm Labels: BBC1, The Apprentice, TV
Okay, so we're five firings into the new series; what better time for a quick reappraisal of how everyone's doing so far in the race to be Britain's Next Top Business Mogul? Let's see what we've learned about everyone so far, and how likely they are to win. Assuming that we know anything about it, of course, which given how last week's firing took us by surprise, is not something that should really be assumed.
Simon appears to be the quietly competent type, who doesn't create an awful lot of fuss. He also wanders around the house in impossibly tiny briefs, which is a rare quality not to be underestimated. We wouldn't be surprised to see him in the final, if he doesn't get distracted by giraffes again. Ghazal has one win as PM under her belt, but that rather appears to have happened in spite of her rather than because of her. She does a reasonably good job of getting on with her colleagues, but doesn't appear to handle pressure well. Tre is a pottymouth, and appears to view everyone else with something approaching contempt. As a general rule we applaud such behaviour, but it might come back to bite him in the arse if he's not careful.
Paul is still something of an unknown quantity. The fact that he was apparently born with an entire set of sterling silver cutlery in his mouth probably bodes ill for his chances of winning, because Sralan doesn't like toffs, or something. Kristina is another one who seems to be flying under the radar - she's not drawing attention for anything good or bad, so we wouldn't rule her out yet. Katie is probably our pick of the women in terms of the one likely to get the furthest, because she puts herself forward a lot (we'll leave it to others to make the "puts herself out" joke) and generally had quite good ideas, even if she's also too probably too posh to win. Adam is tedious and ineffectual as a project manager, and was frankly incredibly lucky not to get fired last week.
Jadine is still our favourite. Her spasms of joy at the prospect of marketing "Eclipse Clips" in episode two is one of our highlights of the series so far. We feel she's unfairly highlighted as a troublemaker. But she's not going to win. Lohit is kind of awesome. He's another person who is quietly competent without attracting much attention, but his inspired marketing of the Instant Diabetes Lollipops last week shows lots of potential. Naomi is someone we don't like, because she picked on Jadine. We don't need a better reason. And finally we quite like Natalie, if only because she clearly dislikes Adam as much as we do. Again: no better reason needed.
So, there we have it. And we're still none the wiser as to who'll go the distance. Who could've predicted that, eh? Anyway, this week's task is all about selling art photographs in a trendy gallery. The art tasks are usually good value, and with any luck some of the quiet ones might step it up a bit this week. Or failing that, two of the more antagonistic contestants might actually kill each other. It's a win/win for the viewers, hopefully.
By Steve :: Post link
:: ::
0 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
You're fired. And you're fired. Oh, and you? You're fired.
SACKING! The Apprentice, BBC1, 9.00pm Labels: BBC1, The Apprentice, TV
Here it goes again, folks: it doesn't seem very long ago that the country was firmly in the grips of Badgermania, does it? Unfortunately it demonstrated our lack of ability to pick the winning horse once again: we backed Karen to begin with, only for her to get fired in week two, at which point we switched allegiance to Michelle, on the suspicion that she was one of those stealth competent ones. But then when she narrowly escaped getting fired in the TopShop challenge and did a bit of a pisspoor project manager job, so we assumed that she stood absolutely no chance of winning and switched our allegiance to Team Badger with the rest of the country, only for Michelle to pip Ruth at the final post. But golly, wasn't it nailbiting?
Expect blood to be pouring from our cuticles at around 9.55pm for the next few months, then, because it's back, with a whole new selection of delusional cannon fodder aspiring businesspeople all vying for that lucrative contract with Sralan Sugar and praying that they're not on the receiving end of the Gruffly-Pointed Finger of Certain Doom. We've had a look at the website to see how this year's candidates shape up, and on first impressions we're backing financial advisor Jadine Johnson, which probably means she'll be lucky to survive week three. Although we're fascinated by "bankrupt entrepreneur" Rory Laing, who we suspect may turn out to be this year's Paul Tulip. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't look like there are any contestants that we'd quite like to bum, but that didn't stop us enjoying the last series.
Apparently the first task involves selling coffee on the streets of London. If last year's first task is anything to go by, the boys will try to smarmily charm their way through it while the girls will all wear low-cult tops and short skirts and sex their way through the task (not literally, we hasten to add). Frankly if they actually try to approach it any other way, we'll be hugely disappointed.
By Steve :: Post link
:: ::
3 pop-up comments
:: Discuss on messageboard
