The Apprentice
My favourite reality TV show of all time is still C4’s Chaos at the Châteaux, about the couple who went to Slovakia to open a boutique hotel. When the producers discovered the living legends that are Ann & David, they struck reality TV gold. I’ll never forget the episode when the little sausage dogs were murdered Don Corlone stylee by a vengeful local and, the butler who was not unlike Fronk from Father of the Bride wept into a silk hankie when he found one of the dogs had been strung up.
Never the less, coming in an extremely close second has to be The Apprentice. I realise it is probably deeply unfashionable to say so, but I love Alan Sugar. I think he is brill, and I absolutely worship this new series. Plus, The Apprentice is fantastic material for anybody studying ideological theory. I’ve used clips from previous series in discourse analysis workshops that I’ve run and, witnessed the thrill of the proletariat turn on the bourgeoisie in a minor revolt during last weeks episode. (All the while annoying my two poor tenants what a fab example it was of classic Marxism sorry ladies
).
I didn’t think it would be possible for BBC2 to find contestants as annoying and despicable as last years, but good ole beeb, they’ve only gone and done it. Not only that, but the boys team this year look like a Take That tribute band. I am fully expecting the launch of a group named “Back for Good”, on the wedding and working mans club circuit when the show finishes. You heard it here first.
10 minutes or so into the 1st episode I was already shouting “I HATE YOU” at entrepreneur Raef.
I’m always suspicious of such job titles anyway and I think entrepreneur in these sorts of circumstances hides a career of imprecision and under achievement. Also Raef is posh and moronic, I mean really so. He looks like a 1980s Ralph Lauren model, with the most incredibly, annoying, thick, eye-brows, which I wish to climb inside my tellybox and pluck. He says stupid things that have no meaning such as “Yah chaps lets rarely sturr it up yah, and rahse our game.” I was in rapture when it looked as if he might get the heave ho at the end of episode one for being utterly rubbish, and delivering the line “I am friend to prince and pauper Sire Alon”, during a class war boardroom debate, but alas no, he made it through. The you’re fired sequence that week, was sooooo not about the boys team and their inability to do the task but, actually a real life enactment of Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and cultural capital. It became quite apparent during the task that there was a serious class division within the team as the ruling classes began to close ranks on the proletariat, despite hideous Raef being amongst the posh posse who f’up the pricing on the fresh lobsters. Ha! My favourite at the moment is no-nonsense ex-army working class Simon. God did he graft during the laundry task.
I love it.
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