I don't accept that 'the show is more about entertainment than about business'. I'm not saying it's not about entertainment, but the two aren't mutually exclusive. There is a lot of entertainment that comes from business deals and that has worked from the start, just as it has on Dragons' Den. It's about business, and that makes it entertaining. I wouldn't say that it's more about one than the other.

Apologies. George, I shouldn't have put words into your mouth. For sure, the two aren't mutuallye xclusive.

For me, at least, the show is much less about the business aspects than it was to begin with, where in the first couple of seasons at least there was a genuine attempt to explain why certain business decisions were better than others. Since then, although the tasks are of course business-based, the focus is much more on the candidates themsekves - in particular the things they get wrong.

With 100 hours or so of footage recorded every episode, it's inevitable that 99% of it gets ignored. My point is more that the focus of the hour we do see is much more about showing what the candidates get wrong (because it *is* entertaining) and less about explaining even business basics. If they showed a more balanced view, showing us more of how and why teams made good decisions, it would be less entertainment (and less entertaining) and more business.

There is a tendency for the show to paint all decisions which lead to the loss of a task as "bad", whereas in fact some of them I would classify merely as "unlucky". And also to equate good results with good performances - for instance, Mark's superior discount at Blenheim was partly due to good negotiation but also due to the lady there being much more amenable to offering a discount than her counterpart at Hever, who was never going to budge far (or, indeed at all) from her standard group rate. But that's too complex to explain to viewers in the time available, so the show simply implies that Mark was good and James was a poor negotiator.

That's what I'm really driving at when I say the show is more about entertainment than business. And, to be honest, that's how it should probably be. It's just that some weeks I feel the balance goes too far one way.

I kind of agree with you, but not totally. I do agree that there is a shift in focus from how there was in Series 1, but Series 1 was actually incredibly entertaining, so I don't entirely follow that there would be less entertainment were they to focus more on explaining business decisions.

There have been series that do go more towards that side of things, and I personally prefer that, but everyone is different. Series 8, for example, is commonly regarded as being one of the weakest, but I really enjoyed it, probably for the reason that it did focus a bit more on serious business decisions, but not at the expense of the entertainment value. There are still occasions when it is pointed out that something may have contributed to the loss of a task, but still wasn't necessarily a bad decision - for example, in the floristry task in the second series of Young Apprentice (only three years ago) a team lost by a small margin - I think it was about £12. One of the things that contributed to it was the fact that they lost a deal with a hotel because Zara and Lewis charged more for the service than they had been instructed to. When that came up in the boardroom, Zara pointed out, quite reasonably, that although they would have won had they gone a little lower and been accepted, they had actually used the same tactic on other deals which had worked in their favour, so in itself it wasn't a bad strategy. I liked that they looked at both sides of what they did there - I wish they'd do it a little more, but that does show that from time to time they still look at things in a more balanced way (in fairness, usually when it affects someone who goes a long way in the process, such as Zara in this instance).

You're certainly not wrong there.

I only see a desperate media-whore who needs to stfu.

Sure, I think we generally agree for the most part but we've always seen certain things slightly differently - be dull if we agreed in everything!

As someone who works in the business world, it's probably natural that I'd like to see a little more of the business side than we generally do - although I agree that season 8 was more business-focussed than 9 and 10. (I'd say the same for 7 too, as the first season under the revised format.)

YA is a good example of a series that was edited to focus more on the business decisions than playing up interpersonal conflict. Understandably so, as watching a bunch of teenagers sniping at each other would have made for seriously uncomfortable viewing. And I always saw the aim of YA as being different from TA (or at least its most recent editions), in that there was always an underlying imperative to show that even teenagers can be entrepreneurial and resourceful and hold their own on business tasks.

I'm not sure if you've seen, but I categorise the series into two groups.

Category A (focussing more on success)
Series 1
Series 5
JA1
Series 7
YA2
Series 8

Category B (focussing more on failure)
Series 2
Series 3
Series 4
Series 6
YA3
Series 9

I say success and failure rather than business and entertainment, because I have found most of the series entertaining to some level, but I have generally preferred the series in the first category, the one that focusses more on success. Of course, there is a lot of overlap between the two - Series 2 is almost in the first category, and Series 7 isn't that far away from being in the second. It's interesting your point about Young Apprentice and not playing up interpersonal conflict so much. I think that was definitely the case for the first two series, but Series 3 did have more sniping, I think. There were quite a few episodes where the candidates ganged up against one another and bickered a lot.

As for which category the current series belongs in, I haven't decided yet. So far it has definitely been closer to Category B, but I think that there may be a bit of a turnaround as the series goes on.

I'd agree with your split - looking at it as focussing on success & failure is a good way of dividing them too.

For me so far this is a category B series, but then I think we've had quite a few in the past which have started out as B and moved to A. Out of necessity the early weeks have to focus on showing us the first few firees so we understand the reasons they go, and so naturally tend to focus more on failures.

Hunchback of Notre Dame asks someone to stand up straight.

Joan Rivers criticises woman for excessive plastic surgery.

Alan Sugar calls OAP grouchy....

Another thing I have noticed, which is most probably coincidence but I'll bring it up anyway, is that there are more male winners in Category A and more female winners in Category B. It's two and four each way.

Rofl.