Kevin Beaumont takes a look at The Apprentice – aired BBC One, 9pm, Wednesday 7th May 2008.

Watchdog, the consumer watchdog program hosted by world renowned satanist Nicky Campbell is a show which features average people who are too stupid to resolve their own problems, who rely on the BBC to take on their burdens and solve their woes.  These woes usually tend to involve things like gas boiler repairs, or getting incorrectly billed by BT .  I’ve often thought that if I get to a point in my life where I think ‘I’m going to email Watchdog about this!’, I’ll need to kill myself, and it’s reached that time of my life where I need to make a will.  I probably shouldn’t do it in that order.  Several years ago I saw an episode of Watchdog about cars which had been ‘cut and shut’ – that is, two different (usually stolen) cars had been welded together in the middle.  Which leads me nicely on to The Apprentice, which this week closely resembles a slow car crash during the first half, and a bear knuckle ride to the edge of oblivion in the second half, only to open your eyes at the end and realise everything is still okay, and it’s time for a cup of tea.  I’ve never been in a car crash, but if I am, that’s how I want mine to play out.  I hope you’re listening, higher powers.

In this episode of The Apprentice, Sir Alan sent off the hopefuls abroad to Marrakech.  My first thought here is that calling this rabble ‘hopeful’ is a misuse of the English language – hopeless is a more apt way of describing them.  Their task is extremely simple – buy a list of items, for which they’ve been provided names and photos, and spend as little money as possible by haggling down prices.  Unfortunately, what follows is a bunch of people less knowledgeable than primary school children being the living stereotype of clueless westerners outside of Europe.

We’re treated to Raef — who is half Jewish and has a BSc (Hons) in Politics and History — trying to get a kosher chicken.  “Allah!  Say allah!” his team hurl, whilst mentioning halal.  In order to try to blend in with the Marrakech locals, a female member of the team wears a hijab.  Considering she was also wearing a bright pink top, I don’t think MI5 secret service will be contacting her in a hurry.

During this task, we’re treated to the common tricks employed on this show to amp up the tension – the musical score builds, things are clearly heavily edited for effect, and we get ‘cut away’ shots of annoyed or astonished faces every 30 seconds between the hopeless kids.  Sorry, I mean hopeful contestants.  What’s evident from this episode, though, is perhaps the format is tiring – it is almost like watching a parody of the show at times.  I kept waiting for Justine Lee Colins to turn up as a “shop keeper”, dressed as Abu Hamza, to sell them lighter fluid.  For the first 30 minutes of the show, you are treated to shots of Sir Alan looking like he is finally about to explode from several years of constipation, and a rag tag crew of contestants who would seem more at home appearing in the third Scooby Doo motion picture.  When you start to notice the musical score to a reality show, you know the format is becoming tiresome.

Then begins the second half of the cut and shut show, where we move to the board room.  Here, the threat of Darth Vader music accompanying Sir Alan Sugar’s on screen appearance seems to dampen , and instead he spent the rest of the episode doing what he does best – opening his big fat flapping gob, and not closing it until he’s tore everybody down and pointed out the people sitting before him are all useless cretins who deserve the absolute certainty of death which awaits them in life.  There are still some miss steps evident here – for one thing, the camera man keeps loosing focus of Sir Alan.  I’m not joking – during the episode, at least 5 times the shot falls into a blur.  Boring technical detail?  Yes.  Prime time BBC One programming with multi-million pound budget?  Yes.  If I was Sir Alan and I was judging the production team based on the quality of footage, I’d be shoving my scraggy foot up somebodies arse, whilst making a face which would make the Queen cry.

Sir Alan rightly pulls up the Jewish member of the team, and asks him if he is Jewish (“Unsure?  We can always pull your trousers down and check” barks Sir Alan).  Although I think the format is becoming tired and the overriding thought I always have whilst watching this show is that “Sir Alan Sugar is the chairman of Amstrad.  Let me say that again: the chairman of Amstrad”, it is never the less a source of amusement and teeth gnashing at the sheer volume of stupidity on display.  Occasionally I open my own flapping gob to shout at the TV.

For the most part, however, The Apprentice is about that feeling of watching the show and thinking “I could do better than those people”.  I think this episode achieves that, but during the first half it verges close to breaking up and crashing into a wall due to a weak task, a weak response from the contestants and the grind of the formula.  Which would be a shame, as the idea of a car crash with the reward of tea at the end is agreeable to me, but with certain death it’s less so.