The first trailer is out!

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2015-...ith-lord-sugar

It's pretty awful

It doesn't look too great, though it reminds me that they (Karen and Alan) were laughing last year at the ads by the candidates over the years

At least a first sneak peek at Claude in the boardroom.

And nothing can beat this trailer obviously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjD3pggCKjg

Yes that was a great trailer. The trailers in the last 2 years have been really good! We've still got to wait 2 weeks for the candidate reveal if it's starting the same time as last year.

Given that there is obviously a space task, I'm amazed that they haven't brought Melody back to coach the candidates on doing business on the moon.

I don't get it...

The contestants are in space suits, right? So there is obviously a task involving going into outer space. And Melody had been involved in business ventures on the moon - why else would she have said 'Don't tell me the sky's the limit if there are footprints on the moon'? So, surely she'd be best placed to teach the candidates how to do it.

Firstly they're not in space suits They're in armour and American football padding! Also I am not sure if you're joking about thinking that that means there's a task to do with space haha.

What do you think of the trailer though?

I am joking, indeed. But... well, they look like space suits to me!

I think that the trailer is more a stylistic reminder that the series is coming than any indication as to whether or not I will especially like this one. Having said that, if it was more of a spoilery-trailer, I would avoid it like the plague, so...

I am looking forward to the new series though!

So am I. I really am. I am currently re-watching Series 5 and I've a new found appreciation for it. Before it I was re-watching Series 10, and having 25% less candidates means that we got to know each candidate so much more, and in Series 5 it feels like everyone brought a lot to the series and there were a couple of good storylines. It did tail off in the end though I think.

It had one of my favourite Apprentice moments ever at the end (the whole episode is a classic), as Monkseal put it in his blog: "Yasmina and Debra have a knife-fight in a car-park over who gets to be PM"

Mind you, series 5 is my favourite so I'm a bit biased

As one of the original BBC2 viewers (also of the first American series), I was owed a good series after the car crash of series 4. First Katie Hopkins and then series 4, let's just say that it could have become a very pulp show after that (think BB).

Also one of the few series that contained multiple storylines and juggled them well (Phil & Kate, Debra's redemption arc, Sandhurst, Pantsman, useless Noorul, the love-hate relationship between Debra and Yas).

Hope that this year the women will be a bit more interesting (last year's storylines were mostly about the men; James, Mark and Daniel).

not a great trailer, the tacky background music ruins it for me...

Really? I loved Series 4. It too had some great storylines.

The story lines were very well-balanced. It made for very satisfying viewing seeing how everything panned out. I am not sure why i am enjoying Series 5 so much this time... Perhaps it's cos I watched Series 10 before it which was a bit of a car-crash tbh.

The women last year were disappointing - bland, which is again testament to the 20 candidates thing. Last year really was a bit bland altogether to be honest. Series 1 - 5 were so good. I wish I had watched it back then!.

Interesting. I seem to recall in the past, you being quite an advocate for having more candidates? You've changed a bit on that then?

Also what made Series 5 Week 10 so good? I've not seen Series 5 in a while and I'm only up to Week 6, but I remember that episode being thoroughly forgettable.

Was I? Perhaps that was before the series had actually aired. On balance I don't think it worked for a 12-week series at all.

Sweet jesus, that launch trailer is one of the most cringeworthy things I've ever seen. It's embarrassing.

Yes, it is quite bad. Whoever came up with it deserves to be fired.

It had one of the worst bullying moments I have ever seen on television (and I watched the American version!), which really tainted my enjoyment of the series. Especially as it came out of nowhere.

At least with Katie Hopkins in Series 3 that plotline had a happy ending, but in Series 4 we basically learnt that evil was stronger then good and we got stuck with four very unpleasant people in the semi-finals (back then, also on the forums, it was basically pick the least unpleasant one). And obviously there was a reason that people believed the spoiler thread at the time, which was completely wrong (but you gotta hold on to some hope).

Series 4 is basically build around the Marakesh episode. Yes, as a big fan I do know the tasks of quite a few of the other episodes, but few people could.

It's the sort of thing the candidates themselves might come up with, and I mean that in a bad way! It's an awful trailer, but I suppose people might remember it so job done I suppose!

Also, Katie Hopkins wasn't really a bully in the same way that some of the Series 4 people were. Apart from Adam and Kristina, she was generally pretty pleasant to people's faces, and only said horrible things on camera. I felt it was tongue-in-cheek, and I actually found her really funny back in those days. (For the record, I no longer appreciate Katie Hopkins; what she has become now is a ghastly caricature, but I did find her amusing on the show. She didn't pick on the vulnerable ones in the way that Jenny and crew did in Series 4.)

I think that Series 4 is easily the worst series.

Really? I think the team were pretty horrible to Adam from Week 4 all the way to his firing in Week 7. Katie particularly treated him like an idiot and her comments to him were very nasty and personal.

I think people generally overplay Series 4 - yes it was uncomfortable seeing Lucinda being reduced to tears in Week 2 by ghastly Jenny and then again Sara was attacked by her Lee Michael and Alex in Week 6. But in Series 4 there was no repeated bullying / exclusion like some seem to make out.

Also I've said it before and I'll say it again Helene wasn't bad! This is in response to Sherlock by the way. I wasn't a fan of Lee either but I wouldn't say he was a downright unpleasant individual, and I would certainly disagree that Claire was unpleasant.

How many times did Katie actually say anything like that to his face though? To the camera yes, but the only time I recall it actually coming up in conversation was in the boardroom at the end of Week 7. She did seem to put personal feelings aside to work on the tasks. Think about how much the whole of the girls' team rated her as a leader on the dog product task.

I felt like it was quite consistent with Sara in particular. I think that's a flaw with Lord Sugar though - if someone is picked upon once he sees through it, but if it happens repeatedly he starts to think 'No smoke without fire' and picks on them. This, of course, makes that person more stressed because they know they're in the spotlight, therefore more likely to mess up. Sara isn't the only time that has happened - the other occasions that spring to mind are Katie in Series 8 and Lauren last year.

As I said it wasn't just Katie - Natalie gave him grief in Week 4 about the constructive criticism he gave her, then in Week 5, Katie, Simon and Natalie were all being very condescending about his sales technique. And in Week 7 Katie was truly horrible to him.

Why did you think it was consistent with Sara? The only week she was picked on which we saw was Week 6, and I admit that was probably up there with the worst occasions of ganging up in the show's history.

I'm not sure about your point with Lord Sugar. Sara was commended in Week 7 following her trip to the boardroom in Week 6. I don't know Series 8 terribly well, and Lauren didn't mess up per se but I can see where you're coming from - she couldn't be the PM as there was Mark who also hadn't and he kind of constructed it so again she looked like she was resting on her laurels. But LS did state it was more due to her personality she was fired. She 'wasn't right for him.'

I don't recall anything that Simon said. I recall that Natalie was really bad in Week 4 (she was thoroughly dishonest about the natural orange lolly thing, because the labels hadn't been printed yet when Adam told her) but I thought she was an okay Project Manager - she made mistakes with choosing the lip images, but in fairness the other team wanted those as well. I think in a way, Katie and Natalie were right about Adam - he was a better salesman than they were, but they were the ones who charmed the artist, and the fact that the artist turned out to be the wrong person to pick is irrelevant. If she'd been the right artist to pick, it would have been Katie and Natalie who were praised for that, not Adam. It wasn't right for her to bring Adam back into the boardroom because he sold the most, but I think this emphasises a flaw in the format actually. She was asked in an interview why she chose Adam over Katie, and she said, 'Because I knew that Katie wouldn't be fired.' I think this is something that needs thinking about - Lord Sugar says frequently that the Project Manager should choose who comes back based just on that task and nothing else, but sometimes that isn't the best tactic. If the two people who were the weakest on that task have been really good in the past, they aren't going to go. I think Natalie was going to be fired whoever she'd chosen actually, but as Katie had done better in all the tasks up until that point that Adam had (and he'd been losing PM the previous week), tactically he was a better scapegoat. Call that bullying if you like - I call it a problem with the format.

Oddly enough, in Week 5 Katie did exactly the thing that she'd criticised Adam for suggesting the previous week. In the sweets task, Katie was saying, 'Adam thinks that we should have a chat with the customers to break the ice before we try to sell, but that won't work. If you're going to get a no, you need to get that no quickly so you can move on to the next person.' I think she was right on that, so it's really strange that on the very next task she went into a such a soft sell mode.

The Sara thing - you probably remember Series 4 better than me because I've only seen the second half once, but I felt that what happened in Week 6 had a lasting impact. That was where she got the reputation for not doing very much, and once someone gets that reputation, it's very easy to play on that. She did well in Week 7, but in Week 8 I felt like she realised that they were all going to turn on her if they lost, and was trying desperately hard to stop them. That was why she was so pushy with her sales pitch - it wasn't how she normally was, but they had rubbish product and she realised that if she didn't sell she'd get the 'you don't do anything' treatment again, and that time Lord Sugar wouldn't be so understanding.