The Apprentice, BBC One

The Apprentice is having a funny turn. Quite clearly, someone on the production team wants to spice things up a bit beyond the usual squalling over who sold the most monkey wrenches, and why-so-and-so screwed up with the order for artificial colourings for children’s lollipops. There have been rumblings around a rumoured relationship (between Paul and Katie), overalcohol consumption (Adam) and just generally tantalising glimpses of life within the house.

Jadine, who was fired last night, burst into tears over missing her kids. There is always a battery of half-filled wine glasses littering every surface. You get to see their bedrooms, which frankly look very cramped and mucky. And . . . well, who is shagging whom?

This would horrify Sir Alan Sugar, who bangs on all the time about it being about the business and “sell-in’ ”. But ever since the show migrated to BBC One, even though we still get the swooping shots of the City – although neither Sir Alan’s boardroom nor the TV studio that doubled for the boardroom is actually anywhere near the City – the show is more and more about the personal relationships bubbling alongside all the dreary tasks the competitors have to perform (next week: TV shopping – again).

This week’s episode was beyond boring: one of those where none of the big kids was in real danger; a week when some deadwood was cleared in a task which now, four hours later, I cannot even remember – ie, the perfect week to show who was screwing whom, or at least, who was rubbish at washing-up, at Apprentice Towers. Even Sir Alan is warming up to the idea that selling a thousand rubber rings might not be keeping millions of us stapled to our sofas. After Kristina outed Katie’s relationship with Paul, just before he was sacked, Sir Alan asked: “Are you telling me they’re carrying on inside the house?” He said it with a big smile on his face.

The house, according to the end credits, now has its own “producer”. That poor devil is clearly straining at the leash, encumbered with thousands of hours of red-hot footage. I would settle for who makes the best omelette, then maybe some pass-the-remote grizzling – and then the full-on, after hours, lights out horrors. Please let prurience and salaciousness win out over Reithian principles and we get to see more action and bed-hopping (and wine-swilling, seemingly by the gallon) in future series.

A Tabloid is Born! BBC Four

Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe, would have known where I was coming from. In A Tabloid is Born! the bumptious Kelvin MacKenzie battled valiantly to cheapen and coarsify a quite intelligent history of how the birth of the Daily Mail on May 4, 1896, heralded the beginnings of what we know today as tabloid journalism. The Times’s name was imputed over and over again as the model of dreary conservatism that Lord Northcliffe was determined to supplant with tales of murder, adultery and top fashion tips for looking like a lady from town.

He exposed adulterers (although his own adultery with two other women was never made public). He went after women readers long before anyone had thought it prudent to do so. He became powerful, criticising the Government’s handling of the Boer War. Perhaps to neutralise him, the then-PM David Lloyd George made him Propaganda Minister – he was so good at his job that the Germans tried to kill him during the First World War but the bomb missed its target. After suffering a nervous breakdown he died in August 1922 and (as evidenced in the Mail’s healthy sales) the legacy of his ceaseless innovation thrives. If it had been invented a hundred years earlier Google would have been called Northcliffe.

Sex Change Hospital, More4

Can we have a moratorium on worthy documentaries about transsexuals (Sex Change Hospital)? Even the most conservative granny must have seen it all by now: this programme, featuring various bits and pieces getting bloodily cut off, fought oddly shy of its USP – telling us how a man might take to having a vagina and a woman not having breasts any more. It was so right-on: everyone was on a jurrneeee, mums and dads wept and came to terms . . . Next time, show Transamerica. At least it’s got jokes. tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

Let the games commence
The new Big Brother house has been revealed and looks the perfect place for more manufactured conflict around race, sexuality and hair extensions. The kettle and toaster have been locked away (a very British form of torture), the bath’s in the middle of the living room, and the fridge is built into a wall in the garden. “What you see here isn’t necessarily what you get,” said a BB mole. “Let’s just say there are secret hidey-holes and different areas that aren’t immediately apparent.” In other words it’s exactly the same as last year. BB starts on Wednesday. Can’t wait, obviously.

Hollyoaks has the last laugh

Graham Norton spent much of the Baftas (rather wittily) sniping at Hollyoaks “in the cheap seats” at the back of the London Palladium. But the cast of the teen soap may have the last laugh: the show is nominated in every category of the British Soap Awards, which – as anyone with taste knows – is a thousand times more important than the puny old Baftas.

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