Does anyone else think this series us unnecessarily disliked? Ok, the final four were literally dire in how boring they were, but up till then I loved it. Every boardroom was very tense yet there seemed to be a great amount of professionalism. Also, I would always support Sterling, they were my favourite team so I was sad when we lost Jenna and Gabrielle. This series was very entertaining ie. we saw two fail ads (azhar and sparkling wine), asking for a million orders, and there were some very entertaining characters eg. Adam, Ricky, Jenna, bit LS did make a huge mistake in getting rid of bilyana, Maria and Jane all in the first four weeks.

Overally, last year was my first year watching it, and ot had me hooked in a way that this year simply doesn't, the overall reason being that there are too many unlikeable characters.

Series 8 does not get the recognition it deserves!!!

I thought it was awful, I stopped watching after about Week 5 which is rare for me as I've always loved The Apprentice. This series has been a massive improvement for me.

Why was it so awful?

And by the way, I am addicted to this series, it was just such a novelty for me last series.

I've been watching since series 3 and have seen all the series, and I have to say that series 8 was by no means a bad series. The only series I didn't like was series 2.

The week one firing often seems unfair but apart from Gabrielle drawing a rose, I'm struggling to remember much about it.

The problem with the series was that there were so many dropped threads, and characters built up one week and dropped the next. One week Jane and Duane were the BIG FEUD OF THE SERIES and then they were fired one after the other with little ceremony. Katie was bigged up as the underdog early on and then she aligned with Stephen for some reason and became a doofus. I get the impression that Adam was supposed to be some sort of big endearing Redemption Arc of the series but instead he was just a dickweasel. Laura was pointless, Jenna was pointless until about a week before she got fired, Jade was pointless, Michael was pointless, someone got fired for falling asleep and it was still somehow boring, Nick was the most competent one but had no real storyline and they didn't really justify his business plan being crap beyond yelling "WTF? NOBODY PLANS A WEEKLY SHOP!" (erm...yes they do?), Gabrielle was alright but really your standard overrated Lucinda style weepie-woo, and Tom as a character might have been interesting if he wasn't being played by a slightly-better looking but just as "charismatic" Kurt.

The only real storylines I enjoyed was Stephen circling the drain, looking ever more haggard as he did so, and Ricky Martin playing the show at its own game by turning the stupid overstatements they force them to make to get on the show into a positive. Oh and the tasks were mostly bloody boring as well, and half of them were broken. "Make Up A Fitness Routine And Sell It And By The Way You Can Just Give Away Free Stuff Apparently"? No. "Design Something You Might Find In A House Or Maybe The Garden"? No. Upcycling? The hilarious culture clash of "going to Scotland"? Make a sauce? The second iteration of that stupid "smell what's selling" task? Yawn.

I still like it more than Series 2 though.

I liked series 8 better than several others.

But then I watch for the individuals despite the manufactured "story arcs" (isn't that a shite phrase?) and I liked

Nick (quite endearing and competent)
Ricky (similar but in a very different way)
Gabrielle ("cookie" but more obviously competent and less eccentric than Lucinda)

I also didn't mind Tom or Jade and there were several others that deserved their 15 minutes of fame. Mind you, while I thoroughly appreciated Stephen's "Incompetent, boastful villain" arc, I really didn't appreciate the overplaying of dislikeable (imo) buffoon Adam. He should have disappeared far earlier. I agree that the problem was building up potential stories only to dismiss them without getting beyond a possible build up.

Um, excuse me how was Jade pointless? She was a really strong candidate I thought. Give me one time other than on Week 7 (the only task that she messed up) that she messed anything up on the tasks. If she'd had a better business plan she certainly could have won.

It's funny, that series got criticism for being boring and not having entertaining candidates, and this series is getting criticism for the exact opposite. Obviously The Apprentice isn't a good programme for extremes. It needs to find the balance of entertainment and serious business. Series 7 did it well.

Jade's edit was 6 episodes of nothing (except that one time she drew a tiger) then screwing up as PM, then another couple of episodes of nothing, then some bizarre "nobody respects me cause I'm a girl!" storyline that came to nothing, then her crappy business plan.

I liked Jade, and thought she was probably the strongest female candidate (not saying much last series) but in terms of what aired she was barely more present than a Lohit.

Seven and five, I reckon, are the gold standards. Maybe series one, too. Good business, but good fun, too.

Series six, four, and arguably series nine, the candidates are a little too feckless. Series eight, a little too competent and uninteresting. I don't particularly dislike any of the series, the show's better for the variety and I'm loving S9, I just don't think any other series nailed the formula quite as well as five or seven.

I think criticism is to be encouraged - everyone has preferences, enjoy them! - but one thing I do find a little bemusing is how, when each series is criticised for its particular flavour, it's suddenly "all the producers care about nowadays." "Oh, this cast of candidates are all such airheads, it's all the producers are interested in any more." I'm always thinking, did you even see the last series? Their approach to casting is nothing if not completely scattergun. Usually a response to the last series, rather than a continuation.

I think that you need to look out for people like that. Helen was my favourite to win Series 7 from the second episode, because even though her edit showed little of her, whenever we did see her she seemed to be doing a very good job - and it's the same with Jade, and with Lohit really, who I think should have won Series 3. I analyse the candidates not on how much the editors show them (because they have no control over that) but by what we see them doing when we do see them. Jade, Helen and Lohit all got more positive edits than someone like Raj from Series 1, who also remained in the background but didn't seem to pull his weight very much at all.

Those sorts of candidates never win though. If you're looking for a winner, it's pointless looking for people who potter around in the background getting five seconds airtime a week of holding a ladder for someone or closing a small sale. They might make it to the end, but they're not going to win, and arguments for them to win tend to be based around "well they never did anything wrong!" which I don't find particularly persuasive, because the show's not supposed to solely be a process of attrition where the person who makes the fewest mistakes wins.

Besides the above I disagree that Helen had a good early edit. Her Episode 1 edit is AWFUL. She's over-ruled on everything, she's ignored by the public when trying to sell, and Lordalan tells her in the boardroom that the task strategy she was advocating was flat out wrong.

All of which is irrelevant to Series 8. My point is that as a candidate Jade is neither particularly interesting or memorable and her passage through the show didn't make a lot of sense. She pottered around quietly in the background, then had a breakout episode of suck (but didn't get fired because Azhar was anti-charismatic and made bad tv) then became some sort of half-hearted victim of people who didn't respect her because she was a serial reality show applicant rather than a "real businesswoman", then her business plan was crap and she left. She's a hodge-podge of "storylines" that never cohere.

I disagree. I suggest the example of Michelle. She wasn't seen hugely in the first five or six episodes, but her edit was very positive. At the end of Episode 6, her edit changed to a negative one during the footage of the winning team's treat, and continued like that until the end of Episode 7. From Episode 8 onwards, it was positive again, but this time she was a bit more noticeable.

double post

Ah!, that explains so much why you rate series 8 so highly. In my experience people nearly always end up loving what they saw first more than the rest.

Series 3 was the first one i saw, i was hooked from beginning to end. After that i enjoyed Series 4 and 5 but not as much as 3. I watched 1 and 2 on youtube,enjoyed them...but not as much as Series 3. Then from series 6-8 i became a bit bored of it. This year i am enjoying it again...but not as much as Series 3!! Because i saw series 3first. Series 3 to me is what series 8 is to you

Sorry to say i rate 8 as the worst series of the lot and can barely remember anything about it

I thought series eight was okay but lacked dynamism or magic moments. A lot of what Monkseal says makes sense.

I didn't feel I got to see much character development or progression - there was a lack of interesting 'focal characters' especially in the finalists who were competent but a tad bland. I agree that Nick's loss wasn't really well-explained and I don't think the show needed both Adam and Stephen for so long. A lot of them I thought were personable and likeable enough as people, but few people really stuck out.

The tasks could have had a bit more focus and layering too.

It was an okay series, though just okay.

Personally, I think that any decline in the quality of the programme lies fully with the editors. I don't think that the candidates, Lord Sugar or the tasks are any better or worse than they were before, I think they all do a great job. Any issue for me is purely with the way that the footage is edited. It annoys me the way that the edit portrays each candidate in a certain light, and seems to be made around Lord Sugar's decision. I prefer just to watch people getting on with the tasks, see everything in a balanced light and understand all of Lord Sugar's decisions. I'm sure he understands them all, but I don't always. I don't think that's to do with Sugar choosing people on entertainment (which I don't believe that he does), it's to do with the fact that the editors don't show all the right clips to let a viewer forge an understanding.

I am clearly a madwoman in that I really dislike series 7. And I dislike series 7 because I, at most, only tolerate or kind of like the candidates in it. This is in direct contrast with how I feel about the series 8 candidates.

I think Jim was a bit of an arse.
I find Helen more boring than a power drill.
Tom is fairly likeable but not that competent.
Susan is pretty competent but by the time she's shown this trait she's also demonstrated a significant ability to irritate.

Scribbles and Melody were both irritants of the highest order and any claim they may have had to offset irritation against entertainment value were spurious to say the least (again I concede that I'm in a minority but I wanted to use the pair of them a human punchbags).

As for the rest, I don't care. And I mean I really don't to the extent of not remembering anyone else from the series.

I remember nearly everyone from series 8. I like quite a lot of them. Anyone I can remember from series 7 I really don't like.

Just my preference. I'm aware it's a singular one.

Okay, that's fair enough. I personally don't agree, but I can see why you think that.

I liked the series with the pizzas the cats and the screwing of the mini trampoline leg on QVC

Series 2 and 3.

Series 8 was easily my least favourite. Lord Sugar quickly dispatched the interesting candidates, leaving behind some who were pleasant and worthy of investment, but not interesting to watch onscreen. For me, the absolute cut-off point was the firing of Jane- it didn't make sense to me in the context of the task, and I also thought she had a lot of talent, a lot of potential*. After her firing, there was no-one left who I particularly cared if they won or not, and there were no especially interesting relationship dynamics happening between the remaining candidates.

I found Jade quite unpleasant to watch, a kind of woman who pushes my annoy buttons, and yet LS took a shine to her so she stuck around for episode after episode with her grating voice and irksome opinions. This is just a personal dislike, and not a general criticism of the series.

My highlight of the series was probably Laura filming a dance-exercise video in her leotard. I'm not a sexist, it's just that I'm a massive fan of dance-exercise. Learned a lot from that video


*If I recall correctly, her business idea was an animal sanctuary. I really like this idea myself, but I can see why Lord Sugar might not have considered it a good money-spinning venture.

I think Jane was fired more because of her CV than anything else. Her strong CV was a curse, because it made Lord Sugar think, 'Wow! This woman must be brilliant!' and then watching her, she just didn't live up to his expectations - like for example, on the task that she was fired, she sold very little and Karren reported that her sales approach was very off-putting. It's why they say you should never meet your heroes. I didn't like Jane at all for the record.

How do you know her business plan? To the best of my recollection, this is the first series that they've discussed the business plans prior to the final; in the past we didn't find out about anyone who didn't get to the interview stage.

Yes. In psychology, it's known as the primacy effect. There's also a recency effect.

One of my favourite candidates has always been Ruth 'the badger' Badger, because she was my favourite from the first series I saw.

I honestly can't remember- maybe from an interview she did after the show. I could well be mis-remembering though- I'll see if I can find any info-

Ah! After a quick google- "she says if she never had to worry about money she would open an animal shelter"
So it was something she wants to do, but I don't know if it was her business idea.