"I am your boss" (The Apprentice UK)

Member Name: Midrange

Product:	The Apprentice UK
Date:	05/04/09 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent television, gripping and educational... very funny too - especially the photography episod

Disadvantages: There's an awful lot of talking-over-each-other in the Board Room - quite frustrating sometimes!

The Concept
Sir Alan Sugar, business magnate worth over £800m, is in search of another Apprentice - a businessman or woman with the skill set, the drive and the attitude to run one of Sir Alan's businesses, earning a salary £100,000.

The Execution
16 candidates travel to London to live and work together... I'm starting to sound like the opening credits! Each week the candidates are organised into two teams and set a money-making task. The TV programme is split into two distinct parts. The first parts covers the candidates progress on the tasks. Cameras follow them through shopping malls, the streets of London or the rolling pastures of the great English countryside as they hunt down good deals, customer opinions or bizarre items. The second half of the show follows the the action in the Board Room - where Sir Alan's aides reveal the winning team. The losing team then has to justify (or more often, argue about) their loss and the team leader has to nominate 2 fellow team members to return to the Board Room later for the really scary part. In the final Board Room section, one of the candidates is fired by Sir Alan... but not without plenty of fireworks.

The Favourites
As with the previous series of the Apprentice, the 16 candidates at the start of the show often appear fairly indistinguishable. Perhaps this is too sweeping a statement but they'll either stand out for being loud, or fade into the background so that in later episode you sit and ask yourself - "who is THAT!?" and wonder if you'd ever even seen that person before. In Series 3 the personalities emerge surprisinigly early on. Look out for Tre - the young businessman who is shamelessly sexist (and he knows it!), the utterly hilarious Adam (who sadly is picked upon by the other candidates) and the near-shocking developments between Paul and Katie - the first romance on the Apprenctice ever? It's worth explaining a little more about Adam - he's so earnest, his ideas are either excellent or rubbish - but through the whole series he's just so likeable... well, for me at least. He's something of an underdog though and eventually he's fired by Sir Alan... hope that didn't give too much away.

The Tasks
The teams are always set a surprisingly complex task, usually having only a day or two to complete it. They must use all of their selling, advertising, bargaining and general business brains to win through. Decisions have to be made fast - and this is where many of the teams fall down. It must be so difficult knowing that you have to be back at Sir Alan's office by 6pm with a handful of profit. People with little experience in sales are soon to go. Strong characters who can defend themselves in the board room go a little later. The ones who win through are those that lay-low, then shine at the end. This is why "characters" take so long to develop. The tasks that bring out the best in the candidates include the "Going to France" episode - where the teams have to sell the best of British in a French market. One team choses English Cheddar from Macro, plus a £150 poorly translated glossy sign to make their pitch. Other highlights include the TV Shopping Channel episode near the end of the series - where one chap (I shan't reveal his name, through fear of spoiling the competition) creates one of the most hilarious moments of television as he demonstrates screwing a trampoline together.

Personally, the highlight of each series is the formal interview stage at the end - the remaining candidates are pitted against Sir Alan's most trusted co-workers and given an absolute grilling. I attended a job interview once the day after watching the penultimate episode of series 3 - and believe it, it gave me the fear! It makes fantastic television though - to see these people stake their claims and win the favour of one of the world's most notoriously hard businessmen.

Summary: Televised competition for Sir Alan Sugar's third apprentice - fast paced, feirce and funny