Since it began in 2005, The Apprentice has given the British public some of the most reliable comedy material on TV. But 19 years on, even a devotee like me has to concede that it’s time for the show to make a graceful exit. What’s more, I’m not alone – with 1.2 million viewers dropping off since last series, and appetite for tonight’s final decidedly lukewarm, it seems that the public is calling time on the show whether it likes it or not.
Offering up 18 self-important entrepreneurs per series, calling their various bluffs through weekly challenges with variously undignified results, it made a specialism of telly that makes you shout at the screen. After the first few series, it stopped pretending to be about serious business and struck gold with the kind of diverting stupidity that money simply couldn’t buy – no amount of producer genius could have given us the legendary car crash of 2012’s English fizz challenge.
But the show’s emotional rollercoaster has lately flattened to a meandering country road. In its heyday, The Apprentice was funny in fist-eating way, on a par with comedies like The Office or Alan Partridge; today, it’s more like scrolling through LinkedIn.
Tonight’s final will see pie company owner Phil and gym bunny Rachel compete for the series’ prize, £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar. If Rachel wins, that will be repetitive for both Sugar and viewers who watched Marnie Swindells’ victory with a very similar idea last year. If Phil wins, rumours that his place in the final (having lost all but one of the series’ challenges) was rigged will solidify. But luckily for him, no one will care.
I thought there was no limit to my interest in watching people in ill-fitting suits argue about half-baked advertising campaigns – turns out, there is, and it’s 18 series. This year, its combination of formulaic challenges and interchangeable contestants (apart from Noor, whose indiscriminate sulking has had me beside myself with laughter several times) has felt especially predictable… Ah, another food task. Oh, it’s an events thing this week. This one’s the one where they have to buy all the stuff on the list.
While the clashing egos at the heart of every challenge will never fail to be fascinating, they produce the same dynamics every time – a self-appointed “creative” is wounded when their ideas aren’t taken seriously; opposing visions that water each other down until what is left is barely discernible as a “vision” at all. Fumbled pitches are still painful to watch, but rarely in the deliciously masochistic way they once were – more like stubbing your toe than surrendering to freefall.
None of the show’s essential components have ceased to be entertaining – what’s changed is their intensity. I tune into The Apprentice to see a deluded business graduate watch their masterplan evaporate before their very eyes – don’t be sanctimonious, you do too – yet in 2024, the f**k-ups are more feeble, the egos less inflated. As such, it’s just not as fun to see them fall.
So what’s behind the show’s subtle – but unmistakable – fall from grace? Who can I blame for spoiling my fun? I suspect that the reason is devastatingly simple – that is, 19 years since it began, the contestants themselves have inevitably watched the show.
Arguably a victim of its own success, The Apprentice is now too embedded in British culture to work properly: like a tainted jury pool, there is no entrepreneur in the country who hasn’t seen at least a few episodes and resolved – as do all its viewers – that they’d never do the same as those idiots, given the chance. Now that they have been given the chance, they’re still making the same mistakes (total inoculation is impossible – it takes a specific combination of earnest and oblivious to apply for the show in the first place) – just less dramatically.
With no variation in either the specific challenges or the show’s overall structure for nearly two decades, it’s perhaps no wonder than things have gone stale. Like a relationship whose magic has dwindled, The Apprentice has been going through the motions for years now, doing what it used to and wondering why it doesn’t feel the same anymore – I’m afraid that, like that analogous relationship, it’s too late to resuscitate.
I’m calling time of death in advance – that is, 10pm tonight, after the final. It’s been great, no you didn’t do anything wrong per se, it’s just that the spark’s gone; we’ve grown apart.