Relishing Sugar and spite

TVReview: 'Shut it . . . From anchor to w**ker . . . You're a lightweight . . . You're fired." No six-figure salary for guessing who's back on the screen. Sir Alan Sugar, self-made son of Hackney, who'd made his first million by the time he was two (awright, 22, or thereabouts), is back with another series of The Apprentice.

In case you've been in Outer Mongolia with your head in a mongoose for the last year, let me fill you in on the brutal facts of this cruelly entertaining show. Basically, Sugar sits in a swivel chair and systematically sets out to destroy 13 of the 14 would-be "apprentices" who have volunteered their inflated egos and offered up their avarice in the hope of being employed by Sugar to be a manager in one of his many companies. Sugar, apparently worth more than £800 million (€1.18 billion), with a property portfolio in Mayfair, a chunk of a football club, a fleet of private planes and a couple of ugly motor-boats, is not torturing these people for the fee - he loves it, and so does the public.

The 14 candidates, chosen from the many thousands who applied to be brow-beaten, publicly humiliated and gaped at, are all 30-ish and have mostly, according to the programme-makers, taken leave from well-paid jobs of the project manager/consultant/lawyer type to experience the Sugar treatment. They have suits and shades and pencil skirts, they crave money and recognition, and if they were fined a euro every time they used the word "dynamic", they could eradicate world poverty.

The apprentices, split into two groups (one male, one female), were, for their first assignment, given a budget of £500 (€734) and sent off to buy fruit and veg from wholesalers and sell it the same day in a Hackney market. The blokes, led by blue-eyed Ben, cancer survivor and all-round solid chap, turned in a modest profit selling "quality produce", despite confusing their lbs with their kgs and falling over each other behind the fruit stall.

The girls, led by crisply confident Karen, much to Sugar's chagrin, massaged the egos and shoulders of the beefy fruit importers, got kissy with the suppliers and managed to blag free boxes of just-about-edible fruit, which they then sold at knock-down prices, turning in a profit of almost a grand. It was satisfyingly amusing to watch Sugar, who can scream at his minions with impunity about "pissing his money up a wall", get sanctimonious about a bunch of women juggling their melons for the cameras.

Such was the impact of the ladies' selling technique that they made it on to Newsnight, where the demure Gavin Essler opined rather strangely that French women get to flirt at work without anyone raising a well-plucked eyebrow - oh oui? On The Apprentice, Ben took the first bullet by the way - one down and counting.

IN THE SAME vein, RTÉ's altogether tamer affair, No Experience Required, each week follows a handful of candidates as they attempt to secure their "dream job". The first programme in the series followed three of the hopefuls, shortlisted from an original 50, as they negotiated a trial placement at Douglas Wallace Architects, with the winner being offered a six-month contract as an interior designer at the prestigious firm. Over the course of their accelerated apprenticeship, Ada, Lynette and Susan were asked to come up with ideas for a new Peter Mark hairdressing salon, and then to give a presentation on a planned cinema and entertainment complex outside Galway.

Unlike the adversarial dog-eat-dogism of The Apprentice, the women were given encouragement and tutoring by Hugh Wallace and his team as they strove to develop their creative potential and unlock their passion for design. This job, Wallace stated, is about "creating emotion".

After Susan was eliminated, hospital caterer Lynette, who had studied design at night, and Ada, a former PA on a stud farm, presented their ideas for the cinema complex to the client.

The two women, reflecting their quite different backgrounds, had contrasting ideas about how to use the leisure space: Ada created a tranquil dining area reflecting Galway's cultural and theatrical heritage, where children could "sample the olives", while Lynette offered a skateboarding arena. Lynette got the gig.

This isn't cannibal TV, but it is an interesting reflection of where we are as a society: personality assessments, interview coaching, shiny-glass modernism, red brick, red-eye shuttles to London, tongue-studs and tears.

The rest of the series includes chasing the dream in the fashion, advertising and restaurant industries - certainly worth a look.

JUST WHEN IT feels like the entire population is made up of gagging contestants and wannabes with white-blonde hair extensions desperate for a slice of low-carb celebrity, a reality TV show comes along that's worth its weight in failed Big Brother auditionees. Families in Trouble is a new four-part parenting series from RTÉ which does exactly what it says on the tin: helps parents in trouble.

In the opening programme, psychologist David Coleman responded to the pleas of Emma Carlin, a 26-year-old single mother of three-year-old twin boys, Kyle and Dean. The boys' destructive behaviour had already seen them expelled from creche, and with Kyle awaiting psychological assessment and both children increasingly unmanageable, Carlin's attempts to go to college and build a career were in jeopardy. Coleman, patient, professional and unassuming, began by replaying to Carlin footage he had compiled of her interactions with her children.

Show me a parent who hasn't, in moments of stress, resorted to silence or anger and I'll eat Chantelle's cowboy boots. In Carlin's case, however, her relationship with her sons seemed to consist of nothing but those two extremes.

Parenting alone and relying on her weary mother for back-up, she had unwittingly created such a hostile environment that her sons could not function. Assisting an admirably honest Carlin to appreciate the effects of her own behaviour while maintaining a relationship with her boys during a process of immense change, Coleman created a tiny TV miracle. Without the awful trappings of a court-shoed "Supernanny", Coleman offered important practical insights into family relationships and helped Carlin and her sons to become a harmonious unit.

"WHO LOVES YA, baby?" The TV taxidermists have been busy, and the bald, hard-boiled lollipop sucker is up and masticating again. Lieut Theo Kojak and his dogged sidekick, detective Crocker (accompanied by some woman with attitude and a lot of hair), have, unfortunately, been pulled from the sarcophagus of dead cop shows and given CPR.

The all-new Kojak (Ving Rhames) is black, with a pearl stud in his ear, some expensive pinstripe and a languid demeanour just this side of comatose.

Maybe it was just my ancient television but the entire screamingly tedious episode seemed to be covered in a kind of soporific moss - everything was dark green and people spoke very slowly. Even the gunman couldn't be bothered running away from the scene of the homicide; he was apprehended, nay, stumbled upon, drinking in a local bar with his shooter still smarting.

"Half of New York's finest are out there and one of them took a bullet," the nasty cop told him when he'd been "arraigned", to which the gunman replied, sounding like a bad impersonation of a B-movie actor: "You wanna cut a deal?" My antennae were falsely activated at the very beginning of the show when Kojak encountered the spookiest doctor you've ever seen on your Telly (sorry), doing really spooky doctor acting with his glasses perched halfway down his handsome nose and his stethoscope swinging dangerously. Aha, I thought, he did it (whatever it is), otherwise why the dewy-eyed apprehension when he tells Kojak that the lieutenant's Auntie Joyce's heart condition isn't fatal.

Well, I was wrong, and the doctor never reappeared - Kojak is just that kind of pantomime. If lousy acting and leaky dialogue is your thing, hey, suck on this.

"My aunt said I have a universal simpatico," Kojak, removing his lolly, told the gentleman crook in a jewellery vault - aah, don't worry, Theo, I'm sure it's not catching.