The Apprentice

As soon as the contestants of the first Big Brother realised that the nature of the project wasn't a piece of groundbreaking ethnography they struck up a song, “It's only a game show”. Despite the shirt-and-tie drag of business, The Apprentice is the same, never more so apparent than last night when a perfectly good contestant was fired and an under-performing ranter was saved to fight, and bark, another week.

We were inside the Apprentice house at the beginning and a shot of a chest fur-showing Philip emerging blearily from his bedroom (he wears pyjama bottoms and boxer shorts), and Kate - with whom he is rumoured to have had an affair - applying what could have been moisturiser or eye cream. “If it's good enough for Beckham, it's good enough for me,” said Philip: it's always good to see a Geordie in touch with his inner Touche Eclat. The task was to create a soap and a shower bodywash from natural ingredients. The Empire team was led by the quietly efficient Paula; Ignite was led by the quietly hopeless and ineffectual Noorul, who Sir Alan noted had been a “little quiet”, a rare example of understatement from the grumpy one: Noorul seems to have mistaken the show for Britain's Next Top Trappist Monk.

Again, you watched the teams flail entertainingly like idiots. James was scared by crabs on the seashore in Empire's quest for seaweed. Noorul's team leadership was non-existent: the first team meeting was a random exchange of words as members desperately tried to fill the silence where direction from Noorul would have been welcome. Paula gave financial responsibility to scary restaurant owner Yasmina and angry Ben, who said that he was going to stay on the sidelines, because, as a man, bathing products were not his domain. Every time Ben opens his mouth, before the inevitable stream of aggressive, defensive babble has begun, you think: “Oh shut up.”

Paula's team's big mistake, which the hawkish observer Nick Hewer pointed out with withering glee, was to vastly underprice the cost of their sandalwood oil. “Would it surprise you to learn that you spent over £700 on fragrance and oils?” he asked just after they had mixed the last batch. Open mouths all round. “Anyway, I'll leave it with you,” said Nick crisply. Bitch!

Meanwhile, for all his heart-throb status, Philip's nerves were fraying around American Kim, who, he said, was “as dumb as a doorknob” - a new one for me, thanks Philip. He then totally lost it on batch codes. “Jesus, get some balls,” he shouted at Kim, who then vowed to “give him balls”. Fellow team-member Lorraine said Philip was a “dickhead”.

Things went from absurd to absurdly painful. Noorul was as hopeless at selling as he was at team-leading, treating customers as if they were French exchange students: “My name is Noorul and I hope you enjoy your lunch.” He couldn't decide when to drop prices, his team despaired. And the honey soap - despite being helpfully lathered on by Mona in a bikini - was horribly sticky, “although it does harden after first use”, we were reassured (a little too adamantly).

The other team sold more successfully, their product was better and so naturally they lost, because of that costing error. Noorul's team said he was a likeable team leader but stern owl Margaret said there was a difference between likeable and efficient, but he was off the hook.

Paula, who had created a lovely product pretty much single-handedly and led a good team, was on the rack. She quite rightly brought shifty Yasmina and angry Ben into the boardroom. And so the vultures turned on the sheep and all the sheep could do was meekly protest that she had delegated the costing to them and that they had failed to do this properly. She was right, but she didn't fight hard or dirty enough. Ben shouted “If you'd let me finish” even when someone else was talking and tore Paula to pieces. Yasmina dug her talons in too.

The telling moment came in her departing cab, when Paula's stout defence that she didn't “cheat or lie” showed how hopelessly unsuited for the show she was. As Yasmina snarled back at the Apprentice flat: “We're here for one reason. Let's get on with it.” There is something even grimmer and more compulsive about this show with a recession backdrop: its Eighties-style venality and personal ambition is so out of time as to be almost quaint.

Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture

A rosy filter on history also suffused the first episode of Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture, through the home movies of dairy farmers. In less than a generation milking cows has moved from manual bucket and pail and door-to-door selling, to industrialised mega-production, mostly catered for the demands of supermarkets. The dairy farmers have gone one of two ways: supermarket suppliers or bespoke organic, and their absorbing story was narrated by Charles Collingwood, who plays Brian Aldridge, The Archers' J. R. Ewing, which gave this cogently related history of economic pressures, profit-making and quotas an added frisson. You half expected Lynda Snell to make a beaky cameo.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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