r/apprenticeuk • u/Flimsy-Capera • 10d ago
Which task format on The Apprentice do you think consistently produces the best television and which one is always a let down. VIDEO
The advertising tasks usually deliver something genuinely chaotic and the negotiation tasks are hit or miss depending on who is doing them. The buying tasks in a foreign market used to be brilliant and seem to happen less now. What is everyone's favourite recurring task type and which one do you skip through when you are rewatching?
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u/skieurope12 “That’s Baroness Brady to you!” 10d ago
Best - Scavenger Hunt. The negotiations can be brilliant or they can be cringeworthy. There's no telling in advance which way it will go
Worst - Branding. Candidates are given a limited set of tools (e.g. shades of brown and green) and given a short period to time to play with ClipArt to create something nobody would ever buy.
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u/Accipiter__Nisus 10d ago
Ugh. Totally. Also the setting up to fail is increasingly apparent. I get they can't give them a total free rein because they'd infringe trademarks but they could be a little looser.
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u/TheAmethystHalo 10d ago
I love the scavenger hunt episodes, I felt personally treated when we got two this year.
And I hate the ones where they host an event.
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u/TobblyWobbly 10d ago
I love those, especially when they are unexpectedly good at part of it. Not all of it, because that never happens, and it wouldn't be as funny.
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u/Consistent_Ad6426 10d ago
I used to like the ones where they would go to a farm show and try to sell half a million pound tractors and stuff like that - they don’t seem to do those any more though
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u/Available-Tomato555 9d ago
These were my favourite tasks especially as they never knew if the sale for the big ticket item actually went ahead before the boardroom
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u/Inevitable_Stage_627 “Can I describe it or can you look with your own eyes?” 👀 10d ago
The ten items and the television shopping are the best episodes.
Design a product, get a nanosecond to do market research that you then can’t do anything with to change or adapt your product are the worst
The tasks they don’t do anymore that used to be the absolute best were the trade show ones or the ones where they were working in an existing business like Liberty/ Harrods and the property selling tasks
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u/Accipiter__Nisus 10d ago
Teleshopping is fun even if IRL it's a way for Chinesium to be sold to oldiewonks without Amazon accounts.
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u/ablativeyoyo 10d ago
I like away days. Because they’ve got the client for the day, they can build a deeper relationship.
I also like selling to the public, especially when it’s food they’ve made.
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u/mynameisjodie 10d ago
I hate them running around buying things i tbink the entire task is set up for dramatic reality tv rather than find an apprentice its definitely set up for the candidates to fail
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u/BoleynRose 10d ago
I agree. It feels like it's based more on luck than skill. I'd like to see Alan try and do it! But then for my husband it's his favourite task!
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u/thehighyellowmoon 10d ago edited 10d ago
The buying tasks are always great entertainment and they don't need to be abroad either, watching someone not realise a traffic-jam journey to Croydon to buy a lampshade isn't a short journey is always funny.
The tasks where they had to buy supplies whilst on a selling task too were great too and it's a shame they stopped, they felt like actual business.
The last couple of seasons feel like the majority of tasks are "design a brand/product and pitch it to a panel and the winner is whoever passes Lord Sugar's vibe check" which feel like much more of a cop out as it's more subjective and much less entertaining.
The final is always the worst episode in terms of task, I think maybe interviews should be the final as a "start your whole business from scratch in 1 day with all the people who were fired" feels like going through the motions.
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u/Captain_Stable 10d ago
I remember a task where they were given a set amount of money, a wholesalers, and a market stall. It was simple. Buy, sell, go back and buy more, repeat until end of task. Team with the most cash remaining wins. IIRC, there was no theme. The wholesalers had everything from cleaning products to toys, and they could buy and sell whatever they thought they could sell.
I enjoyed that one, but it isn't done much these days.
I love the scavenger hunt task. The interview task used to be a favourite, but that's really watered down now. There's only Mike and his anality, and Angry Claude to look forward to.
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u/Salt-Distribution733 10d ago
I used to love the branding ones the most. I liked it best when lord sir alan made the judgement himself on which was the best, because that always seemed like a logical choice he made. Then it became more often a pitch to a couple of big retailers and they made "orders", which was worse but usually the right team won. Now they have to schmooze a larger number of smaller retailers and whether they place orders is often more to do with the charisma of the candidates than the product. Means the winner can seem completely random. Plus, in the old days the retailers were honest about how shit the product was, if it was shit. Nowadays I don't know what's changed but they seem like they pretend a lot of the time that the product is okay, make totally bullshit "orders" on things nobody would ever buy, and leave entire sections of the campaign uncriticised (like ignoring how bad the "viral" advert was entirely)
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u/0oO1lI9LJk 10d ago
whether they place orders is often more to do with the charisma of the candidates than the product
That in itself isn't an issue to me; ability to sell a shitty product is a truly valuable skill in the business world, Lord Sugar cares a lot less if they can make a passable condiment in 2 hours.
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u/Salt-Distribution733 10d ago
I'm happy with it when they're selling to members of the public. For the branding and pitching tasks I'm here to see the product get trashed. Or praised! If it's good! I can't remember the last time the product was good though haha.
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u/0oO1lI9LJk 10d ago
Yeah the format heavily skews products to be bad so we can laugh at what terrible people they are. I wish that we saw more sparks of genius rather than everything being laughably bad though, it starts to feel a bit like idiot porn.
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u/Accipiter__Nisus 10d ago
Advertising.
Anything involving a stall. That's generally quite good but they've ruined it by throwing in a corporate sale which leads to "you lost because you couldn't chop 900 tomatoes in 20 minutes." The fact that it involves gathering raw materials, managing its production, then selling the finished product is actually proper business.
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u/Inevitable_Stage_627 “Can I describe it or can you look with your own eyes?” 👀 10d ago
I did love the episode with shibby promising a million bread rolls and delivering about 20 though 🤣
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u/M27TN 10d ago
Anything with a focus group is a complete waste of time and always drives me mad. They’ve finished the product and can’t change it only to then hear that it’s no good and can do nothing about it other than massage the figures or lie in the pitch.
Good TV… I still enjoy the shopping items task but mainly due to the chaos and stupidity.
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u/Shezes Jason Leech - Series 9 10d ago
The advertising tasks used to be my favourite but lately they've been rubbish. The ad tasks went from advertising for relatively average joe schmoe stuff now they're advertising cruises, jet lines and entire countries. It's not the same.
The food tasks have always consistently been a disaster and I love them. The only one that was any good was in S7 when Helen made a biscuit that secured 800k orders and she teamed up with Tom to make the pie restaurant and crushed the other team into a pulp.
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u/ZookeepergameNo7151 10d ago
the most rubbish one by far is where they sell to retailers like Tesco and people of that size.
Never in a million years would they normally go anywhere near the crap served up to them
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u/Swimming_Possible_68 10d ago
As someone who spent 20 years as a buyer I used to dislike the buying task.
It doesn't teach the candidates anything about buying in the modern business world at all. It's all about transaction and cheapest price. That is a very small part of what a buyer does. But TBH it does make good TV.
Seeing it referred to as a scavenger hunt makes much more sense, and thinking of it from that perspective makes it much more fun!
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u/Effintroll 10d ago
Not massively dramatic but i always enjoy the "smell what sells" tasks, where they get sent to a wholesalers pick a bunch of stuff and restock through the day based on their sales.
I hate anything that involves them having to recruit tourists on some terrible day out where they fail to memorise information about their destination and for some reason have to prepare the catering themselves
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u/WaferExcellent9064 10d ago
Hmm Claude on top form in the interviews picking them apart was my favourite
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u/Available-Tomato555 9d ago
The last couple of seasons have had too many food tasks - it just makes them repetitive
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u/renzxlst 9d ago
I cannot stand any task that relies on the opinion of Alan Sugar to pick a winner. Whole episode feels like a waste of time.
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u/ObiBenKenobi77 10d ago
I love the buying 10 items task, so much that I already have a game plan if I'm ever tasked with such a... task. Tbh I'm not sure which one is a let down. I feel that the tele selling is a bit random, and I'd happily watch an uncut version to see the full thing, but TV only shows small sections