The One Show, EastEnders, The Repair Shop\u2026 watching BBC1 can feel so much like you\u2019re stuck in a continuously repeating pattern that you may start to hear the voice of Rod Serling. \u201cImagine if you will, a British TV viewer starting to realise they are watching the same thing over and over, trapped in a time loop. Welcome to\u2026 The Twilight Zone.\u201d Or rather, The Apprentice.<\/p>\n
Twenty series in, nothing whatsoever has changed. Trundling on screen was the latest bunch of besuited braggarts, seemingly interchangeable with those from previous series, and here was an opening montage of Lord Sugar saying \u201cyou\u2019re fired!\u201d Later came a moment where he told them: \u201cI need you to go away and I\u2019m going to decide which one of you is going to leave the process.\u201d Hang on: not \u201cwhich of you will get fired\u201d? This was breaking new ground!<\/p>\n
\u2022 Axe The Apprentice with its arrogant motormouth show-offs? It\u2019s about time<\/a><\/p>\n The Apprentice has been coming under vicious sniper fire from the media lately, with suggestions it could be axed and revelations about a candidate\u2019s historic racist tweets, but you wouldn\u2019t have noticed anything was amiss from this episode. Sugar was on positively ebullient form \u2014 by his standards \u2014 as he mused on the country\u2019s challenges over the span of 20 series: \u201cThere\u2019s been financial crashes, pandemics, not to mention Liz Truss\u2026\u201d That one provoked a gentle ripple of laughter among the candidates (there\u2019s a prime ministerial legacy for you).<\/p>\n Sugar didn\u2019t stop there with remarks about former PMs. As he observed the CV of one of the berks in front of him, he offered: \u201cIt says here you was a bodyguard for Boris Johnson\u2026\u201d \u2014 toot toot! Joke incoming \u2014 \u201c\u2026what was you doing, protecting him from his wives?\u201d Further chuckles came from the candidates, who by now were looking foolishly relaxed.<\/p>\n In fact when cuddly Uncle Alan revealed \u2014 perhaps in a ploy to throw in a reinvigorating splash of Race Across the World vibes \u2014 that he was sending them all to Hong Kong, they looked delighted, entirely forgetting that this would mean a 15-hour flight for a challenge stressful enough to make them break out in hives.<\/p>\n Soon they were on a wild goose chase around the city in search of shrimp paste. We were back to the usual frantic phone calls made in the back of cabs, with enthusiasm fraying fast as everyone melted in the humidity under the hawkish death stare of Baroness Brady, Sugar\u2019s aide. The girls\u2019 team were hopeless at navigating the geography of the city and, in borderline delirium, performed an on-the-spot song while bartering with a bemused shopkeeper. Pure Apprentice cringe.<\/p>\n \u2022 Lord Sugar: I told my staff, \u2018Get back to work. If you don\u2019t like it, sod off!\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Then came the boardroom scene in which, as ever, the incompetents all got het up (\u201cCan I just finish, please?\u201d), with those in the line of fire blaming their team leaders. Kieran\u2019s smirking estate agent confidence was demolished as his team were barked at by Sugar \u2014 no longer cuddly \u2014 for being \u201ca bloody disgrace\u201d.<\/p>\n The bright-eyed blonde Georgina, leader of the girls\u2019 team, had arrived on the show beaming naively: \u201cWho says that business has to be mean? Why can\u2019t it be sunshine and rainbows? I\u2019m going to sprinkle my magic all over the boardroom!\u201d By the time of her mercy killing, it was as if she had been steamrollered by brutal industrial machinery. Sunshine and rainbows have no place on this mean old show.<\/p>\n As for Sugar, he furrowed his brow, its lines etched like ancient runes, and burbled, \u201cYou\u2019re a bunch of busy fools! It\u2019s very disheartening for me \u2014 this is the 20th year\u2026\u201d The time loop continues. Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix<\/a>, the best Prime Video TV shows<\/a>, the best Disney+ shows<\/a> , the best Apple TV+ shows<\/a>, the best shows on BBC iPlayer<\/a> , the best shows on Sky and Now<\/a>, the best shows on ITVX<\/a>, the best shows on Channel 4<\/a> streaming, the best shows on Paramount+<\/a> and our favourite hidden gem TV shows<\/a>. Don\u2019t forget to check our critics\u2019 choices to what to watch this week<\/a> and browse our comprehensive TV guide<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The One Show, EastEnders, The Repair Shop\u2026 watching BBC1 can feel so much like you\u2019re stuck in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-264481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Catch up on iPlayer<\/p>\n