Something is wrong with the show. Since they changed the prize, the tasks are all basically the same - buy a load of cheap gear and flog it for a profit. We see little strategy, almost no creativity and just a lot of rushing about and street market style sales techniques. Quality of candidates is poor but we aren't really seeing what they can do. Nick and Karen's role is reduced and they seem bored and overly sarcastic. And Lord S is making some weird decisions. Don't get what's going on.

The show looks a bit tired now not sure if the decline set in at the end of the previous series when Tom won even though Lord Sugar kept having a go at him week after week.

Nick and Karen aren't saying much because there's not really much to say. Next week's task looks bizarre why is a respected businessman like Lord Sugar getting involved in sale of graffiti art?

I agree with this thread and think that while the idea of the business investment as the prize works for the Junior version of the show it's attracted the wrong kind of candidates for the main show and made some of the tasks all look a bit pointless.

The ending tonight was awful all Lord Sugar could come up up with in his final sentence for firing Azar was that Jade had more enthusiasm. There was no real argument or explanation for Azar's lack of contribution on the task other than that he didn't come up with any solutions but there was nothing about his previous weeks or examination of how badly or well he'd done in other tasks.

The show used to be worth watching in his first few years now it's coming across now like a Channel 4 or Sky reality show.

I think he is just after ratings now. Does he not have a Twitter cat fight with Piers Morgan about ratings most of the time?

No offence, but this series candidates were like people you would have on Big Brother. That woman with the loud make up, the wrestler, eeeek. Not saying people should not be different, but I can remember when on the whole, the candidates were classy business people.

I only started watching about 3 seasons ago but i've also noticed a marked decline in the quality of candidates. Ok it's amusing to watch people mess up and make stupid decisions/comments but it does undermine the idea of the show as a serious competition. Also, as the OP has said, the tasks are fairly basic with little room for people to either massively succeed or fail so everything is just a bit meh.

You've summed it up well. When shows start putting in characters the ratings die.

I don't think so. This lot have actually set up businesses and there's clear types we have seen many years before - Simons, Paul's, Kristinas, Yasminas , quiet types, market traders...... if anything there are fewer characters there for ratings and story . That may be the price of sifting for decent business ideas - as last year's candidates failed to think of much and mot previous years would have struggled too. There's just no one really outstanding unless one of the queter males fits the role - but no one is performing as miserably as Tom did last year.

A bit of a mystery is why this year's candidates - including many who are still in are already on twitter. That does look odd given past secrecy.

Has anyone got a strategy on how to make the show better

I agree with most of what has been said above, although there's an element of rose-tinted glasses at play too.

I think the quality of candidates has been in steady decline since series two. Since then we have generally had 2-3 credible candidates each year, and then a series of increasingly extreme characters - the 'chancer' (Tre Azam, Michael Sophocles), the 'TV wannabe' (Kate Walsh, Katie Hopkins, Katie Wright - what is it with Kates?!?), the 'loud-mouth' (Stuart Baggs, Adam), the 'misogynist', the 'organiser' (Helen Milligan, Stella English) and so on.

We're now at the point where the task is frequently just half the episode, and it's all about the boardroom - which means we also get fewer pithy observations from Nick and Karren. Which means the idiots get their airtime over the quiet, competent ones.

I do feel the show is going downhill, although after 8 years that's inevitable. The tasks feel tired and repetitive, and in reality have nothing to do with how the competition is won - it's all about an idea, not how good a project leader you are.

My solution is quite dramatic. Instead of having weekly tasks which are basically all fly-by-night sales operations, you make the entire series one big task, and the teams have to project manage it from start to finish. So week one would be about coming up with the idea and researching the concept. Week two might be about product development. Then there would be a week where they have to pitch to potential buyers, then maybe test-sell their product in a market/shopping centre, create an ad campaign and finally launch it. Every week would test different skills, and teams couldn't just walk away from the task at the end of the episode and act like it never happened. And at the end of it you would have a genuine winner, potentially with a real business to run.

It's very different in concept to the current format and it's much more business-oriented, but could still be entertaining given the potential pitfalls at each stage. Be interested to know what people think. It's just an idea for fun, really - it'll never happen.

I think the change in prize for the winner plus the previous series has contributed to this series being worse. It said a lot about the previous series that Tom was criticised almost every week for at least the last four or five weeks for being too weak etc. and yet still ended up winning.

In effect it didn't really matter how well or badly he performed the fact that Helen was clearly the best performer and would have won had first place still been to work for Lord Sugar. Tom only really won because he had a better business idea than Helen, maybe Lord Sugar knew all along who was going to win which was why he kept Tom in.

This series the tasks have become more muddled like last night's and the one two weeks ago with the fitness video it seems to be about ideas and how to think how they would implement them rather than how they actually perform.

The show hasn't really evolved it's become confusing.

Lord Sugar is getting older.....in the boardroom, he is not as witty as he was in the previous series.

Translated: It's a mess.

Did Lord Sugar say he'd already looked at the business plans this year? So in his mind he might have already decided the winner. Which probably would explain a few of his dodgy firings so far...

I don't think it's to do with changing the prize. The tasks are no different to the way they were before. Strategy is still there on occasion. Last night, for example, one team used strategy and won, the other didn't and lost. Last night was solely about trading from a stall but they certainly aren't always like that. Next week is the art gallery sales task (so defo no market trading spiel welcome) and we haven't had the usual treasure hunt task or product selection task yet.

There aren't too many ways to decide the winning team, so it's not surprising profits on sales is a common method. It's at the heart of any successful business after all.

Nick and Karren have a similar level of input to before, a raised eyebrow here, a pursed lip there. It's always been mostly negative and sarcastic reports though, the teams report the positives for themselves. I agree the quality of the candidates isn't that good this year though.

Sugar has certainly made some strange firing decisions but whether that's to do with the prize or simply keeping controversial characters in for ratings is not clear. However he has got rid of at least three candidates who appeared to be finalist material, and it's likely they had good business plans too, so I think it might be to keep the controversial candidates in to spice things up.

That may be the task design. They seem to have a lot of wins by teams who should have lost after big mistakes but win because an error creeps in elsewhere.. This week there seemed too much data to deal with to possibly do thingsmuch better. One team needed to know the time needed to restock and the other needed a better idea on prices and longer and more data to make an intelligent product choice. Perhaps 2 days rather than one after working up their strategy the day before? It looked a good task that could tell you useful things though.

Or he has just got rid of people he thinks are loud, annoying, not very interesting or just not people he wants to work with or nurture.The requirement changes a bit with the new prize. In the past you need a Simon to sell to one market, and a Lee to another, and Michelle's experience for the job in hand her series. Recently, its he's been looking for someone to do a dull job and its those years higher fliers have been fired.. Its not yet clear this year if he is doing another Tom - and keeping weak people in because he wants their business idea . He's kept a few people in who might have gone already, so, even if he is allowing plans on offer, and how much he likes people, to dictate who goes , he may still have an open mind between quite a few people.

Last night's task proved absolutely nothing and was a complete waste of a programme.

Jenna is good a selling beauty products which is her business.
Adam is good as a market trader which is his business.
Women of Essex like fake tan. Plus two of the candidates spend most of their time as delivery boys.

The best tasks and one which demonstrates real aptitude as a PM are those where they have to manufacture or put together a product, produce an advert and pitch it to the buyers.

Sugar says he's not looking just for a sales person, but if you are good at selling it helps your chances of not being fired 99% of the time.

I still find the show compelling. However what is apparent over the last few years is that alot of the candidates have grown streetwise as to what to say and do in the company of the rest. Far less outspoken comments, far less gobsmacked reactions and far less gloriously up themselves bravado picked up by the brilliant camerawork.
You do need characters, arguments, tiffs and factions which are human conditions we can all identify with. We dont get as much of that and the resultant blandness has put some people off.

The "problem" with this series is that everyone's quite competent, and (even if you don't buy that) everybody's quite professional. You don't have the lows in terms of teams making a loss, or getting into a fight in the street, or doing a stupid dance instead of pitching, or getting no orders, or marching around a shopping centre screaming "DO YOU LIKE THIS DRESS?" or claiming they shouldn't be expected to perform basic tasks like operating a camera or trying to sell things, or spending £5,000,000 on sandlewood, or having death-feuds with other people where they openly state that they're alcoholic tangerine sluts who should just get run over by a truck and die.

This makes everyone look kind of middling and beige. Even the worst candidates have strong sales skills and can spot a potentially winning strategy (cf Adam in Scotland) just from what's happened on the show before. There's no Melissa Cohen or Samuel Judah, and so no-one for the best candidates to stand out against (Nick and Tom are amongst the best performing, most sensible, most business-savvy (at least in their edit) candidates in the show's history).

Also, people are quite capable of "turning it on" in hilariously artificial ways when the show tells them they need to in order to survive, contrary to how they normally would behave, just because they know the tropes. Hence Gabrielle suddenly bellowing in peoples faces like a howler monkey in the boardroom despite normally being sensible and reserved, because she knows "passion" there is what sells. Or otherwise at least somewhat intelligent people like Katie/Azhar/Ricky making ludicrous statements in their VT interviews that they clearly don't believe, because they know it'll get them air-time/publicity/further in the show. None of this is really very convincing anymore.

In short, all the contestants know the show too well at this point, despite the supposed "complete revamp" that was supposed to be brought with the change in format.

Jade is quite loud and annoying while Azhar is quiet and calm. Jade made a complete hash of the task but Azhar was fired. I can't believe after that shambles that Sugar thought Jade had any potential as a possible business partner.

Too much is made about the prize change in my opinion. The process of elimination is exactly the same. The only difference, as seen from this forum at least, is a suspicion that he decides the winner early on and protects them in the boardroom. But there isn't such a suspicion about the Junior Apprentice which has a similar prize. It seems that it's all because Tom won last year and some people can't see why he deserved to.

A half share in a business with Lord Sugar is not much different to him putting you in charge of a new business venture except it's the winner's idea that is used. It has potentially more longevity and there are no existing employees to upset by putting a highly paid Apprentice winner alongside less well paid colleagues.

Agree with the OP's thread title.

This show has definitely lost its way in the name of TV sensualisation and ratings.

SA couldn't give a hoot about who wins, so long as we get controversial decisions like tonight.

No, that's not a change. There have always been an element of sales in most tasks. That's how Ruth cruised through to the final in series 2, for example. If she had strengths other than sales, she didn't get much chance to show them off.


The tasks have had creative elements, too. For the first branding task they had to design logos. For the second task they had to design a gadget. They had to come up with a new condiment and design branding for it.


I think the problem is more that they are too good. None of them is making big mistakes. If the prize has made a difference, it's in attracting better candidates.

One sign of this is that no PM has been fired yet. Usually there are several who are exposed as completely useless when they become PM. For example, Jade was pretty poor, but she still made £838 to the other team's £955, so there was less than 15% between them.


But this series hasn't put in "characters" as much as previous years. There's no Katie, no Lucinda, no
Saira, no Syed, no Tre.

For me the biggest difference is in the viewers. Many people here seem convinced that firings are based on business plans. That is ruining the show for them. There's no evidence for it, but I doubt there's anything anyone could say that would persuade them they are wrong. That particular kind of cynicism has become fashionable this year.

(In previous years they were cynical about other things; no-one wants to take Lord Sugar's choices at face value.)

But, with the new prize, demonstrating that you can do what you say you can is more likely to be related to being able to produce your business plan than being a good PM. its at least of great interest that the salesman can sell, the beauty person knows her business and the artists can design? its also more important that he can get on with people - if he's going to be doing it himself, rather than sending them off to the basement of one of his busineses working under one of the people he uses for his interviews?

He doesn't mind the loud tough people with something he can see and likes in the way of ability - like the Debra's or Claire's or Ruths or even Katie's. He does seem to dislike the loud people who quarrel and gabble and don't have as much direction, or point, or ability or verbal skill. He just glazes over at the thought of having to deal with them daily. Jade just about got into the first category on drive and past performance, and not actually doing that badly moneywise, wheras Maria and Bili were put, I think , into the second. With Azhar the Sugar label is negative - he uses it in the boardroom, picking it up from what some of the team say, and what Karen implied, and it turns up again in the Sugar excerpt they show on the follow up show. Its also what he took I think from Azhar's turn as PM when he was pretty ineffective and all the comments (and footage?) he took on board then. He had already also labelled Azhar as too quiet, now he's been labelled as too negative - the result is that he goes in a similar category to michael and goes home in the same way.

I have to agree, I don't understand this suggestion that they've now started casting 'characters' - I think this series has had the least 'characters' since I started watching in the third series.

It's actually the lack of big characters that has made this series a little dreary IMO.