Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the series...but I think at many points it was looking increasingly contrived and formulaic.

After 6 series its all becoming a bit dull, even the music has began to grate.

Many of the tasks are either recycled from previous series or flawed. We have had far too many hours wasted on seeing candidates do very low-level selling in market places for example.

Flawed tasks this series include: the bakery task, where none of the candidates could feasibly become expert bakers in just a few hours. IMO the task would have been far better with a professional bakery taking production volumes(to a deadline) from the candidates while the candidates did the selling.

Instead we saw a situation where no matter how organized the team were, they were never going to produce enough product to really succeed and fulfill the orders.

the Bus Tour task was fun, but again flawed. Whoever won the deal with the ticket promoter was going to win the task. Yes it made the 'deal' the candidates offered the promoter more exciting...but it also meant that the remaining 45mins of the epsiode were pretty much pointless (albeit entertaining) as again we just saw the candidates running around making sales for £10-20 which doesn't test anyone's abilities.

I see series 7 will see the prize be an offer of 250K to set up a joint venture with Sugar. At least this is a step towards change.

Overall I think the show needs new graphics, tweaked music and more innovative tasks and maybe even a new boardroom to keep it all fresh.

Well next years series has been in the can for a couple of months now so we will just have to wait till march to see if any changes have been made, with the change in the prize next year i think we may see some changes.

Considering the prize has changed so dramatically, there obviously will have to be format changes.

They need to axe Junior Apprentice. I don't want to watch a bunch of kids bickering. Its just pathetic and boring. Also in my opinion has ruined what was a great show with overkill.

Like to see Adult series only back in its normal March - June slot.

Think some double firings and an 'individual' sales tasks in the later stages would be some good changes.

I didn't imagine the next series would be in March. Seems a bit soon. Maybe Junior Apprentice will be?

Thank God! At least everyone can stop pretending the show is about Sugar finding an Apprentice. He definitely doesn't want an actual Apprentice as evidenced by his boardroom comment last night: "Do I want someone with more experience, or do I need the aggravation of training someone?". What he's actually after is a capable pair of hands - which he got in Stella. If he is looking for someone to 'partner' with him, it should definitely be a tougher ride for the candidates and more exciting show.

I read somewhere they are going back to the normal march-june run, it only ran so late this year because of political impartiality isues with Lumpy in the run up to the Election. back to normal next year.

Since it seems all he wanted was a project manager to supervise the implementation of orders at Viglen, Stella herself mentioned on BBC Breakfast that she wouldn't be doing any sales, they had a great team doing that already and she was just concerned with for-filling what they brought in, why all this guff about creative flare and entrepreneurial edge when he fired people (Chris Farrell being a glaring example).

It also seems stupid to me why he keeps asking why they should have the job, when they don't actually know what the job is, they can only ever answer with the stock string of clichés as they are talking from a position of ignorance.

Next should be really different and interesting. No more jobs but an actual business to run!

50% stake which equates to 125,00 prize fund for the winner is a good deal. But im sure LS will have a clause somewhere that says until he recoupes 250k back, the apprentice cant sell his stakes!

I thought the Juniors showed up the adult apprentice by being generally far more professional.
If you find it overkill, then simply don't watch it and save yourself for the next grown-up apprentice.

It makes little sense because this whole series he has been going on about risk taking, spotting the advantage and creativity, and no steady or cautious winner. He then goes for the candidate at the best age to manage, who alone has experience of managing and, when asked, only describes her as meticulous.

Thats not an apprentice's job and its not a job that Laura, Sandeesh Paloma or Christopher or anyone but Stuart in the last 6 couldn't do if they were old and experienced enough. Its also a bit worrying that the person who got the job is the one that made two maths errors and the biggest buying mistake on the show which suggests that everything but Stella's CV and ability to manage shown in week 2 doesn't matter. You then have to ask why it was Stella who was sent to manage the boys and prove herself and no one else - which might suggest that CV mattered most and that her CV was tested as early as week two?

I think you've nailed it.

I think it's time to call it a day. BB never got the message until a yawn-worthy endless amout of series, neither has Cowell with the X Factor. Once the formula has had its appeal; a maximum of 3 series should be enough. I agree with the fact that old tasks are regurgitated. That, in itself says call it time.

Sadly TV executives are not equipped with the basic prescience of normal people.

They have to actually see the rating go through the floor before they get the message.

Having said that, things may improve next year because, for the first time, we will have an idea what Sugar is looking for.

Unlike the last six series where the exact nature of the person he seeks is effectively unknown because the job they are doing is a secret!

I would like an episode where neither team win a task (perhaps could only happen during the advertising task) and someone from both teams are fired.

If you mean Shibby's team, we don't know that. What happened was the production sub-team decided to ignore his orders and make some different products. Arguably that was a good choice as they could be sold to consumers for a high mark-up. When you sell to a hotel, the hotel acts as a middle-man and applies the mark-up, so you don't make as much profit. Part of the challenge of the task is to identify traps like that.

Another part is to see how the candidates fair when out of their comfort zone. None of them knew how to run a bakery. Christopher didn't know, but he turned out to be brilliant at organising it anyway. The task brought out that ability.

If they only had to sell the bread, and not make it, the task would be simpler and less interesting and less informative.


The agency brought in £700. That's a big advantage, but Joanna and Chris nearly squandered it by only bringing in about £340 between them. Liz brought in £500 on her own. If Stuart had done the same, it would have been decided by tips.

It's perhaps worth pointing out that winning the tasks is less important than how you perform. On that task, Stella showed she could be less "corporate", which helped her secure a place in the final, despite it not having much to do with the task result.

I would like to see more innovative tasks, though. They seem to have better ones on the US Apprentice. However, often they are sponsored by a big corporate, which doesn't really fit with the BBC.

I would like to see some double firings next year as there were none this year until the triple one in the interviews where LS basically had to. Just having one person fired can be boring and often bad as on numerous occasions more than one person should really have been fired. Donald Trump fired 4 in one go on USA Apprentice! It would certainly keep the candidates on their toes if they knew that there was a bigger risk open. I would like to see some new tasks given out next series to make it more interesting as well.

Also, I happen to think that LS being business partners with the winner is a bad idea. He's not going to be looking at any of the selling tasks or stuff like that he's just going to be looking for raw ability to organise a business and do presentations. I agree with changing things a bit but that's a pretty poor idea in my opinion.

The bakery sub team were always going to be making muffins etc for sale on the market stall during the day whilst waiting for Shibby to call through the hotel orders. They decided to ignore Shibby as he was making demands that they hadn't a snowball in hells chance of completing, so they wrote all his orders off as a bad loss. Of course they didn't know how little profit they stood to make even if by some divine intervention they had been able to fulfill the order.

Lordalun has done double firings before eg Jenny McGuire and Jenny Celery after the Morrocco task. (By rights it should have been triple with Micheal "Good Jewish/Halal Boy" Sophocles too!)
But UK apprentice seems very tight in the number of candidates vs no of shows so this year when he lost Raleigh he couldn't do one. That was probably true in Junior apprentice too come to think of it...
I do agree multi firings are fun - I'd sacrifice the interviews round to see a few more kicked out just when they think they are home 'n dry in the board room

They couldn't make both the hotel orders and the muffins. Whether they could have just done the hotel orders is unknown. (I suspect Christopher's group could have.)


He had 5 for the interview round. He could have had a double-firing and then had 4 for the interview round - which is how many he had in the first two series. He could even have a triple firing, have 2 people per team in task 10, then have 3 people in the interview round, fire one of them and still have a 2-personal final as usual.

Or, if no-one quit and there were no double-firings, he could have 6 in the interview round, fire 2 and have 4 in the final. It was a 4-way final in series 4. Or he could fire 4 in the interview round.

So there's quite a lot of flexibility. He can enter the interview round with anything from 3 to 6 people.