Arts & Culture
You're fired! A TV column by Jamie Hill

There is a perfect television show out there.

It’s been going for years and has a formula that is absolutely perfect. Although not much changes. I’m talking about The Apprentice which returned to our screens in October. It is a fabulous slice of television. Everything about it works. From the sociopaths you love to hate to the music, to the denouement where someone gets the chop. With other reality shows, they try and get you to empathise with the personalities. You’ll usually have a bit of plinky plonky music as they tell you the sad tale of how both their parents died in an unfortunate abseiling accident and that they’ve lived in a matchbox on the side of the M40 ever since. Not so much with The Apprentice. The show doesn’t want you to like the contestants. It wants you to see that they’re all a bit wanky. In that way it’s more honest. The formula is fantastic and like the music it follows the same very watchable beats every episode. It goes like this… 1. Early morning wake-up call. 2. Alan Sugar sets a task. 3. Two teams then plan the task having elected a team leader. 4. Both teams are made to look idiots as they make loads of mistakes in the task. 5. They then get to the board room where it is revealed which team failed the least. 6. The winning team has a luxury treat whilst the losing team goes to a dingy cafe and drinks lukewarm tea. 7. The final boardroom showdown between three losers as to who will get fired by Alan Sugar. 8. Biggest loser gets fired. It’s brilliant television and weirdly it’s never predictable as the team you think is going to win never does and an insignificant action by one team member ends up being the grand mistake for the whole episode and he or she gets fired and then complains in a taxi that he or she will show them before disappearing forever. The current crop look like a fun lot with the girls so far being especially at each other’s throats. The sad thing is it’s actually a pretty accurate reflection of the shallow quicksand corporate lifestyle. Not exactly a life most of us would want to aspire to but each to their own. But as televisual voyeurism it’s pretty damn good.