Settled down to watch it as usual last night and it just couldn't hold my attention. There's no real meat to the tasks, Nick and Karen seem to be very peripheral and the board room session takes over everything else. I really want to enjoy it as much as usual but it seems to be misfiring. And YF seems deadly dull as well. Any thoughts?

Agreed.

This series isn't bad (series 4 and series 6)...it's just very meh...

The big characters aren't really engaging, and the likable ones are just that. Likable and nothing really else.

Last year we had Susan, Jim, Tom and Melody. All interesting and good television.

This year none of them really feel very charismatic. They all seem to just be going through the motions

Most series do tend to lose their appeal when the format changes little.

I really enjoy The Apprentice and am still enjoying it BUT I haven't been watching from the first series.

One series I have watched though is Ramsay's Kitchen NIightmares and it now really annoys me (although I loved it at the start).............so maybe that is why it has lost its appeal OP.

Oh c'mon, last night's show was probably the best so far for me. Loved to see them visiting that vineyard in the beautiful countryside and only 25 miles from London. I was so envious of the pair who owned it .
Last night's was a proper task with lots of elements, not like the ones where they spend all the time just selling.

i havent watched it since dwayne got fired
he just fires anyone, all he does is look at the business plan the one he likes the most will be his topr four
same with tom last yr, who lost like every task but still satyed, he knew that about his nail file idea
also it shows that you can have a totally different business plan to what he actually invest in, and you dont have to win it to get the money, susan ma business has been invested

I think this series has been a little washed down. I think some of the PM's should have been fired and it has sort of made it predictable.

Also the majority of tasks seems to be Selling, Selling, Selling.

No real creative think outside the box task for me.

Too many nice-but-dull, uninteresting characters and for the guys little real eye-candy to redeem things (sorry, call me sexist, but I have to be honest) dull tasks, no real narrative arc for many of the candidates and unimaginative bait-and-switch editing leading to seemingly perverse decisions - I've reached the stage where I genuinely try to predict who'll win by choosing the team that the edit portrays in the worst light.

This article sums it up pretty well - although I disagree that the format has run out of mileage. I've seen a number of seasons of The Real World and it was still watchable after a longer run than the Apprentice has managed.


http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s108/...-be-fired.html

And his total corporate powerism over anything 'littledom'

He 'SA' has finally succumbed to the power of elitism and corporatism.........simple as that.

The guy doesn't give one shit iota about any little guy, that he once was,

He only cares about corporation with a capital C

Fraud!

No great characters we love to hate.
Tasks have been lame.
None of those classic brain donor moments - 100 chickens for 100 pizza toppings
Even the boardroom was flat in last weeks show.

Next year it should definately go back to finding an Apprenctice.
Maybe show a bit more [maybe 5 mins] of the hm's at home together as well.

Agreed. When I watched the US version they did this a lot. I wouldn't want quite the same focus on the contestants, as it could get a little Big Brother, but it would add some meat on the bones to see them interact in the house. One of the problems with this series is the very flat one-dimensional aspect of it. While it can be mildly enjoyable, it feels very flimsy and superficial and not engrossing at all.

Same here, have actually tried to watch it each week but found that 10 minutes in I'm doing something else (reading or PC) and just have it on as background noise. It really can't hold my attention, I then turn over for YF and the same thing happens again!!!!! I only have poor mans TV lol so if there was anything else to watch I wouldn't even put it on!

I think it's because the job isn't now to be "an apprentice", but a business partner.

Only Lordsuralan knows what all their business plans are, and he's probably already decided who he wants before it starts! So a firing which to us appears silly, is because of the end result and has very little to do with the task (like Stephen last week).

The problem is this.

You have a 'serious' program who have to put forward serious candidates.

But you have to balance it with putting in 'characters' who clearly won't make the grade but will have us in tears of laughter and fits of anger as we watch them fall.

Unfortunately the BBC went with the former and you end up with very few people you 'love to hate.'

Once Stephen goes, interest in The Apprentice will plummet like a rock.

I more or less agree with your rationale - however I would argue that anyone who believes The Apprentice is ultimately a serious business programme is as deluded as those who complain about the likes of Ann Widdecombe and John Sargeant surviving in Strictly Come Dancing because it's ultimately a serious dance competition. If either of these things were true, the former would be relegated to the depths of BBC 2 and the latter would drop the "Strictly" from its name.

The Apprentice is primarily a light entertainment programme. If the production company lose sight of that again, with dull and repetitive tasks and casting a collection of terminally boring individuals (and a virtual android like Tom) the show will eventually die on it's ar*e.

Spot on. Dull as ditchwater this series.

I've found it a bit dull this year as well tbh. I think it's mainly because the candidates aren't especially interesting, there's a few unlikeable ones but no real pantomime villains.
Also when we know that the tasks don't really matter as SA will have already picked out whose ideas he likes the most, it makes it all a bit redundant.

Definitely not what it was.

A typical Apprentice candidate list used to be composed of approx one third potential winners, one third potential winners but with personality/character flaws that meant no sane man or Lord Sugar could possibly work with them, and one third deluded idiots who never stood a chance but who gave us a good laugh as they blundered about like giddy kittens in a boot factory.

The latter two groups would provide the entertainment for the first two thirds of the series by which time the dull but capable ones would have shown a bit more personality and we'd be getting to know them and pick favorites ready for the final heave.

This year there have been no standout idiots and no true villains, only a sad slightly desperate low grade level of grubby unpleasantness from Stephen.

All in all it's just looking tired. Maybe for next year they should insist that the candidates put some of their own money into the tasks, that might stir up a bit of conflict, as would changing the team selection process....have Sug choose team captains based on the relevance of their skills to the task and then they select team members like in playground football, stir up those rivalries.

I like the idea of candidates using there own money.

That would stop all the half assed performances on certain tasks and would definately whip up some conflict

It's been on too long, and is now as tired as Dragons' Den or Big Brother.

Time for the celebrity version to take over like they did in the US, that will refresh the programme for a couple of series.

NO! The celebrity version ruined the American version.

Why isn't it working for you OP? The candidates are more competent than previous series, aren't making any glaring funny mistakes and therefore people who just watch for the Lulz aren't getting as much and are calling it boring.

I think Dickens 999 pretty much sums it up for me. It is tired and the candidates are uninteresting. I thought early on that they were all a bit samey - in the early series there were older people, educated people, posh people weird people, chavvy people, all sorts, but now they're all the same.

Also, I really do think that the change of prize has affected the programme. It creates a situation where the host knows more than we do so we are constantly wondering if he is making decisions based on things that we are unaware of. I thought Karen and Nick had much more involvement this year and Karen has seemed somewhat sour. The tasks seem very samey, even the prizes are poor. All in all, just not good.

The problem, if there is one, is the selection of candidates who will make good TV rather than good potential business people. I don't think the prize has anything to do with it. There were viewer unknowns in the old prize format too. Sugar knew what type of person he wanted for the job he had in mind. Viewers didn't, so it was possible he kept people in who matched his plans.

Agree.

As per usual the BBC is still dumbing down its programmes and this is why the show is poor this year.

For the first time watching The Apprentice, and I have watched all series, I find that I have no favourite, in fact I could not care less who wins. I am hanging on my the skin of my teeth and if next years show is as bad as the present one I shall stop watching.

I don't know, a proper celebrity one instead of the 'kids' series could be interesting, I ended up watching all of the 2nd series of the US Celebrity one on BBC becuase it was on at like 1 in the morning and there was nothing else to do and I found I really enjoyed it mainly because there were some real characters in there (Joan Rivers/Annie Duke being the highlight) It could really work over here if they got the right people to do it

But they have not done that - indeed most people seem to think they have too few TV characters to get a good laugh or dramatic story out of them.

What they have done is possibly mirror a problem with the British economy. They don't have the corporate high flyers this series or the bankers or the lawyers or the great presenters or sales people or the Private Walker types or the people with economics or business degrees. What they do have is competent people who have set up shops or small businesses - or could set up one doing what they now do for someone else. They are competent - but hit neither extreme of ability found in past years.There's no Helen or Kate or Liz or Ruth or Debra and no Syed, Tre, Stuart, Alexa or Paul or Edna . Even last series Susan came with a far more interesting back story, Jim was boardroom gold. Melody was a mystery. This mirrors reality where the most able candidates just don't set up their own businesses and the joke candidates can't be expected to produce anything at the end.

Ironically, the only past winner who I can see offering a successful winning plan would be Michelle - who had set up her own company before doing the Apprentice and actually runs the type of groupon like site which the apprentices had trouble finding offers for last week.