The Apprentice 2024 – a few observations on episode 1…

I’ll confess that I’d forgotten about The Apprentice this year. And if I’d have remembered, I probably would have been reasonably adamant that I wasn’t going to watch it. Same old fame hungry, obnoxious parade of fools, same old Lord Sugar wisecracks and same old tasks. Somehow though, when we realised that our series link on Sky was taping it, we found ourselves drawn to the familiarity of the whole thing. So, what did I find in episode 1?

In short, it was the same old fame hungry, obnoxious parade of fools, the same old Lord Sugar wisecracks and the same old tasks…and yet, I was gripped throughout!

I missed the first few minutes – busy with hunting down less than healthy snacks, I’m afraid – so if there were the usual claims of invincibility, possession of the world’s greatest personality or superhuman sales powers, then I wasn’t there for that.

I joined the candidates – not literally – in the boardroom where Lord Sugar introduced us to this year’s two tables full of business jesters and it felt like his pre-written ‘off the cuff’ jokes about the candidates were more obvious than ever. Mind you, he had everyone chuckling loudly along; but then what else are you going to do when your fate lies in his hands? I mean, imagine the year when someone pipes up with an unexpected comeback…

One candidate had listed himself as a combination of brains and beauty on his CV, to which Sugs added “and bollocks”. And it’s wit like that, as well as a wonderful gift for alliteration that keeps us all glued to the screen, isn’t it? That said, this bloke was hardly George Clooney, so maybe our resident Lord was just being accurate, rather than funny.

This year, there’s a twist; the first task is the corporate away day task, rather than the finding items one and while I’d been my usual cynical self to this point, now even I’m taking a sharp intake of breath. I mean, this can only go wrong, surely. Thankfully – spoiler alert – wrong is very much the word here.

The teams are split into girls and boys and if they’re given a witty business name, then I don’t catch it. Tonight, they’re off to the highlands of Scotland and so when Virdi volunteers to be project manager and then says he’ll treat the clients to some bhangra dancing, it’s a bit of a surprise. I’d innocently expected something a bit more traditional, but maybe that’s why I’m still an English teacher rather than a business titan.

As both teams plan their ‘experience’ it’s hard not to use your foresight and spot where it might all unravel. Especially tonight, when every plan sounds fraught with danger and the chance of throwing money away. On the boys team someone promises to ‘bring the pardy’ – yep, not ‘party’ – and I’m immediately wondering if perhaps his last pardy was for his own 5th birthday. Meanwhile, the girls decide that the world class highland games athlete isn’t needed for their own mini highland games, so they’ll just do it themselves. I mean, it’s only throwing tree trunks and boulders about, so what could possibly go wrong when you don’t really know what you’re doing?

Over on the boy’s team they’d decided that offering a welcome drink of a glass of water to their corporate clients was a good idea and – hands up if you can see something going wrong here – the team running the activity had told the team doing the food to have it ready for 2.15, on the dot. Don’t anyone worry though; these are young titans of business, so someone’s absolutely sure to be keeping an eye on the time.

Speaking of food teams, there’s something not quite right about the fishcakes that the girls are making for their client’s dinner. And at the same time, the mix for the rhubarb crumble has gone missing. I mean, they couldn’t have, could they? Turns out they could.

The editing on The Apprentice is always brilliantly done and cut together to make sure that the narrative fits together in a way that means you’re never quite sure who will win and where the next point of tension will come from. In the opening episode we get just enough of a tease about the crumble fishcakes, followed by no further reference to them until right before they’re being served up. As a result, the tension was palpable as they were served up, with no one sure of what was about to happen. I have to say that the slow reveal of the client’s facial reaction as the sweet fishcakes hit their tastebuds was a thing of beauty! But the unwitting candidates reacted well, with Sam pacifying them the promise of a dessert that would be to die for, which it turns out, had the eaten it, they almost certainly would have.

As we wondered what the client was going to eat, we left the girls camp to head back to the boys, where ‘surprise, surprise’ the activity had run over. Cut to the kitchen and the food is out, but 2.15 has very quickly become almost 3pm! The result? In a staggering display of not actually grasping the gravity of the situation, Asif and Tre pretty much blamed the kitchen staff!

And when we then saw the clients tapping the sausages off the plate and heard the accompanying ‘clang’ it was hard to argue about where the blame should lie…unless you knew about the 2.15 deadline, that is! Again though, the story here – and the comedy – is in the faces of everyone involved. The poor hungry clients who’ve paid hundreds of pounds for a bit of a walk, some bhangra dancing, a toe curling episode where Virdi does some horrendous MCing and genuinely asks the client to ‘make some noise’ not once, but twice, followed by some toad in the hole, are horrified!

Amazingly for the entertainment offered up by the boy’s team, the best is yet to come and in fact, will be offered up in instalments in what remains of the episode. And the first instalment, there’s not long to wait as despite the enormous levels of sheer disaster about the whole day, Jack still has the sheer brass neck to ask if anyone would like to give a tip!

In the boardroom, I’m fully expecting a history making multiple sacking, with Lord Sugar’s pointy finger working overtime. Both teams have to give refunds, but despite the girl’s making a measly £122 profit, it’s the boys who lose after a 52% refund turns their profit into a staggering loss! The comedy reaches its peak when one of them initially claps and whoops a bit, explaining that he thought they’d made £300 profit and won. The silence is deafening. This guy is not being given a quarter of a million pounds of Lord Sugar’s money!

In then end, despite organising surely one of the worst corporate days out in history, project manager Virdi is saved for ‘having the balls to step up’ according to Lord Sugar. Or was it just because here is a man who has only given the tiniest glimpse of his capacity for entertaining the nation? We’ll find out in the coming weeks.

For now though, it’s Oliver who’s fired, seemingly because he just looked a lot more gormless than the rest of the lads, which is an achievement in itself.

I can’t promise a review every week, but I can promise that The Apprentice is sure to serve up some classic comedy in the coming months. If only that was the remit…