I watched the first episode of Series 3 of The Apprentice Ireland the other day, and I just thought it was dreadful!

Firstly I do not like Mr Cullen, and his two Aides are void of charisma and charm. Also, the cast has absolutely no diversity. No ethnic minorities, no nothing, bar one man who was born in Greece and one woman who was born in England! In fact, five of the men looked very similar!
Also, why on earth in the losing team's post-mortem, do some of the candidates still have to stand behind the ones who are seated, and have them cramped up in one half of the room..., This makes conflicts very difficult to materialize. Boring!
It also just lacks characters. They're all a bit dull.

Are there any international versions as good as our mighty British incarnation??

I have seen a few international versions, and they generally don't appeal to me. The only international series that I have enjoyed is The Apprentice Australia. I'm not sure what it is about it - I quite like the boss, Mark Bouris, and it seems to have quite a similar formula to our version. They sadly made only one series of the ordinary version, then celebrity editions. The episodes used to be on YouTube, but that user doesn't seem to be around anymore. I can't find it anywhere else online, but if you find it, strongly recommended.

I remembered you saying that and I tried to look for it, but unfortunately couldn't find them anywhere either

Well, there's always a way to scavenge them from somewhere, if you look hard enough.

Hope so!!

I've seen Seasons 1-4 of the US version, plus the first celebrity edition (Featuring Piers Morgan, Lennox Lewis etc)

The first season is well worth watching, but overall, it doesn't really hold a candle to the British version in my view.
Everything is seriously over-dramatised, we only see 20-25 minutes of task each week, many candidates are clearly fodder or just hired because they are good-looking. Trump is, imo, far less intelligent and switched on than Sugar, making many of his firings make little sense and often seem random. The PM is usually fired because the team usually scapegoats them and very very few PMs take more than a lot of criticism from their team. The US version has many twists from Season 2 onwards and they end up messing with the format too much. The latter stages of Season 3 (airing whilst Season 4 was filmed) got poor viewing figures, which led to a quadruple firing, as well as two double firings in Season 4, presumably so Trump could inflate ratings.

I would probably rank any of the UK Series above any of the US ones, except perhaps Season 1 of the US, which was a lot better than the ones that followed (Though I personally loved Season 3, because many of my early favourite candidates ended up doing well and it has a very satisfying winner). My advice? If you're bored of the UK version, give Season 1 a go. If its a decision between the UK and the US version, pick the UK one. Seriously.

I haven't seen any others, because I'm not sure I could get into them. I'm happy watching UK (And occasionally US) re-runs.

Maybe I'll give Season 1 a go of the Apprentice USA.

To give season 4 of the US version some credit what happens at the finale is pretty amazing.

What happened??

I watched a bit of the first episode, but when someone thought that it would be a good idea to sell a glass of lemonade for $1,000, I realised that it wasn't for me. Even Michael Sophocles wasn't that silly!

I watched it this morning too. It's a totally different ball game to ours. The atmosphere is very different. One thing is that I hate their boardroom - it's too dark!

I think that's why I like The Apprentice Australia. Most of the international versions are modelled off the US series, which isn't very me. The Apprentice Australia seemed more like it was modelled from ours. I think it's the attitude of Mark Bouris that made it like that though. He was quite calm and in control in a similar way to how Sugar is - not overly belligerent and melodramatic like Donald Trump.

It's not actually a spoiler, but it relates to what was said above.

I've seen all of the US Celebrity versions and I think they're brilliant as a stand alone reality show but world's apart from the UK version. I'm really not a fan of Donald Trump and there's not too much focus on business, but definitely very entertaining

Trump and Randel are both d*ckheads!

Well good news, Bill Cullen went bankrupt. I think the Irish version was the most like the US one, with the nepotism and repeated self marketing.

I did enjoy the New Zealand version, and the Aussie celebrity ones are pretty good. Nothing is as good as the UK version though.

I personally thought the U.S. version's Martha Stewart season was surprisingly good, all things considered. Stewart seemed a lot more on the ball with her firing decisions compared to Trump, and the selection of tasks was also pretty interesting. The only real big negatives were that some of the attempts to give the series a more "feminine" feel just ended up looking silly, and Stewart seemed to show quite a bit of favouritism to one of the candidates who came from a similar background to her.

I can't believe you say that!

It's most definitely a complete rip-off of ours. The same music at the start, the same sequence in the first episode (ie. the candidates, the boss, the punishing selection process), similar boardroom, and the 'You're fired' theme is similar to ours: ticking sounds, and drum beat after the person gets fired.

I think ours is a reinvented version of the US version, and the Irish version is a rip-off of ours.

What was the purpose of having a special series with a different 'boss'??

The music is the same, but it followed the US more closely, with many tasks being corporate adverts. Each year had the Cadbury's task, the diamond place Christmas ad, the final task to do with Cullen's motors, and so on.

What you mean promotion for the boss' businesses? In that respect I guess you're right - but the Irish version's atmosphere is very similar to ours.

I'll agree to that. Nicked the atmosphere from the UK version, took out the wit and charm of Suges, and stole the shameless self promotion from Donald. Also stole from the US one, in that Trump now has his kids as board members, and the hacked up plastic surgery nightmare woman in the Irish one was Cullen's girlfriend.

Does he? That's so odd...

To attract more female viewers and get them interested in the main Apprentice series, I'm guessing. The Martha Stewart series had a 2:1 split in the female to male candidates ratio, and in various ways tried to be softer and more feminine than the Trump series, including Stewart telling candidates that they "don't fit in" rather than firing them, as well as writing them a letter after they've been fired (which had hilarious results when one really forgettable candidate got the axe, leading to her writing a letter which literally just said "Thanks for being on the show, I wish you well in the future, signed Martha Stewart").