Ink of Blood

I prefer the UK Apprentice to the US one, though I won’t got into all the details why here. Suffice to say that, despite the fact that all of the candidates are arrogant and willing to throw each other under the bus at the first opportunity, I still found this series to be entertaining to watch.

I liked the fact that there were more hands-on tasks in this series, though I felt that some of the candidates demonstrated they weren’t able to get their hands dirty.

I especially liked the handyman task and the pound-store task. I did, however, feel that many of the project managers didn’t do a very good job of listening to their team members. I did understand how much stress they were under… but I felt the cut-throated nature of many of the candidates came out at times when it was detrimental to the success of the task.

It was good to see how many of the candidates interacted together… and who worked well together and who didn’t get on so well. There were also a lot of extras, as well as the Apprentice: You’re Fired… and I thought it was a good way of getting to know some of the candidates.

I did feel that some of the candidates showed better sides to them during the series, in particular Vana and Joseph… but Brett was also someone who I wasn’t taken with at first and who showed more depth during the episodes.

I especially liked the Honest Subtitles and I felt most of those were really true… and made me giggle. I wasn’t as sold on the Rap-Up, though the idea was a really intriguing one.

There was a new presenter of You’re Fired, but I felt he made good use of the show’s terminology… and it was really funny to see Romesh ‘trying’ to experience being an apprentice… in particular in the final episode.

I liked the task where they had to write and produce children’s books, since that was quite a creative task. There were a lot of occasions where I really cringed along with the candidates, though… and there were some of them I was rooting for more than others.

All told, though, I was relatively happy with who Lord Sugar chose to be his new business partner. Both of the candidates in the final had good ideas… but I thought it was obvious how it was going to go.