It’s been 20 years since The Apprentice first aired on the BBC and believe it or not, it’s still going. Series 19 is reaching its grand finale this week, when viewers will be treated to the final two contestants battling it out to sell Alan Sugar their visions for an air conditioning unit business and a fusion pizza company, respectively.
It’s a programme that lots of Gen Z-ers grew up with, myself included, and it’s still eminently recognisable for its hapless contestants and ridiculous tasks. But it’s outdated in so many ways, from the Acton caff frequented by the losing team each week to Lord Sugar’s terrible puns.
So why do so many of us still love it? This series of The Apprentice remains one of the most-watched programmes across all broadcast channels in the UK, according to TV ratings site BARB. The hot sauce-creation task that dominated episode eight was watched by nearly 6m people – even more than Adolescence for that week.
One of the best things about The Apprentice is that it has never bothered to change its ways. It operates on an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra. Most of the tasks we’ve seen as part of its 19th iteration are exactly the same as the ones first broadcast in 2005. Some would say this is boring, but I’d argue that it’s a good, solid constant. There’s a familiarity here – it will never be asking any big questions, and nor will it ever, apparently, launch a particularly successful business.
It is low stakes, and if anything is going to make you feel better about your own intelligence, it’s watching two bright entrepreneurs argue over whether creating an app for children that educates about bankruptcy is a good idea or not.
Plus, there’s no better way to feel good about your life choices than watching people flap around in the name of fulfilling ridiculous tasks. This year, for instance, we were treated to yet another scavenger hunt task. The contestants were tasked with finding rhubarb in Stratford-upon-Avon – how hard can that be? But no, one of the candidates had to be told to imagine “a big, pink celery.” When faced with “concave shoes, a pair in steel”, they arrived at the conclusion that it could either be “shoes for caves”, or potentially “those shoes that the knights used to wear, you know, for jousting.”
Another much-loved but comically redundant task is the shopping channel challenge. The candidates must choose products to sell (anybody for a novelty garden water feature?) and market them live on TV. Despite teleshopping having mostly moved online, the show’s producers certainly could not risk waving goodbye to an incredible episode, and so it has remained: a dinosaur premise.
This year’s version did not disappoint. I imagine there are great swathes of comedians who wish they could deliver a routine as funny as one of the candidates, Liam, attempting to sell a two-in-one vacuum. For starters, the hoover had at least three moving parts, all of which were dropped on the floor at one point. Without being able to work the extension, he had to crawl around on the floor asking viewers to imagine the suction. Comedy. Gold.
I asked my friend, a 24-year-old young professional and fellow Apprentice super-fan, why she thought it appealed to her so much. She pointed out that the candidate-selection process is spot on. “There are always some people who are so outspoken that you know they will cause chaos on every task, others who just don’t know the first thing about business and then just a couple who actually know what they’re doing, just to throw you off.”
She described it as a Love Island for business – it’s about how people perform while cooped up with one another in an extraordinary-looking house. It’s Dragons Den meets reality TV meets stand-up comedy.
And while that’s true, the show also hasn’t fallen into the trap of becoming too soppy. Unlike plenty of other competitions, like Glow Up: Britain’s Next Make-Up Star and The Great Pottery Throw-Down, The Apprentice rarely has tears. There are no sob stories, which may mean that we miss out on learning what the candidates are really like, but it does make things feel a bit less personal when Lord Sugar tells a candidate he could have done better in his sleep and raises his dreaded finger.
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You don’t have to feel too bad that candidates are losing out on the £250,000 investment if you haven’t got to know them personally. They will just forever be the bright spark who tried to prep 150kg of tomatoes by measuring 1cm slices individually with a ruler fashioned from a napkin (yes it happened, and the candidate in question managed 20kg in the end).
Having said that, Lord Sugar appears to be able to forgive a multitude of sins. He’s taken air-conditioning entrepreneur Dean Franklin to the final despite interviewer Claude Littner finding an image of a dildo attached to a client’s AC unit on his business Instagram. He’s also taken Anisa Khan forward, whose business projections were branded “complete fresh air” by businesswoman Linda Plant.
The Apprentice may rely on a slightly tired formula, but there’s still comedy gold aplenty to be milked from its premise. And with the finale fast approaching, I for one will be watching it for as long as I can.
The Apprentice final airs on BBC One at 9pm on April 17