Showdown at the office

TV REVIEW: The ApprenticeBBC1, Sunday NewsnightBBC2, Tuesday

McBride's Invincibles:The Rugby Lions of 1974 RTÉ1, Tuesday

Hope SpringsBBC1, Sunday

'YOU'RE HIRED!" God, what an appalling fate, to be wrenched from the tumultuous seas of television celebrity and cast on to the barren island of industry. Wrinkly, irascible Sir Alan Sugar (now Lord Alan Sugar, vaunted Enterprise Champion in Britain's ailing Labour government), he of the closely clipped beard and self-made angry eyebrows, finished the fifth series of The Apprenticewith his pulsating forefinger pointing at Yasmina Siadatan. Young Yasmina's brutal realism (her no-frills business motto being "keep it simple, make more than you spend") and vaulting ambition (she had previously persuaded her mother to re-mortgage the family home so that she could open a restaurant) was honey to Sugar's commercial sensibilities, and, after 12 long weeks of watching his wannabe apostles flogging everything from dusty skeletons to double buggies and strawberry-and-basil-flavoured chocolates, he had his apprentice.

The Apprenticeis smart, recession-proof television. On the one hand, it is straight-up reality TV, with the requisite quota of humiliation, tears and bitching, and endless opportunities for inter-contestant sex and betrayal; on the other hand, it is shot like a drama, with the contestants (who, by and large, have great big white teeth, crisply ironed shirts and pertly busy little backsides) strutting their stuff over prettily cobbled London streets in between swooping aerial shots of the mega-storey metropolis. Possessing all the qualities that Sugar demands from a potential deal by attracting around eight million viewers a week, this is one series that is worth more than its weight in gold, offering the BBC a massive return on its investment (not to mention its unlikely achievement of turning Sugar the pixie-like autocrat into a cuddly celebrity).

Despite Sugar’s growling familiarity, however, and his somewhat flimsy attempts to act the TV despot, the hook of the series is undoubtedly the contestants. Season after season, the suited cadets turn their expectant faces towards Sugar, and, despite being told that these candidates represent the thrusting advance guard of the entrepreneurial spirit, we are invariably treated to the strangely compelling unmasking of their hard-nosed capitalist illusions, revealing the pantomime of naivety, desperation and shaky egotism that lies beneath.

I suppose I just don’t know anyone who believes in the business fairy any more, but it makes me writhe with incredulity to hear some deadly serious bloke, with half a ton of hair gel in his mullet and a pinstriped suit wrapped around his jumpy abdomen, telling the camera that “business is the new rock’n’roll and I’m the new Elvis Presley”. No, darling, you’re not Elvis Presley, and in a couple of tired years, when your five minutes of celebrity are long forgotten and you’re riding the escalator to your desk in a liquidation firm, a little part of you will cringe at the memory of your prediction. Perhaps you’ll even wonder whether Yasmina, her halcyon TV boardroom days far behind her, still has her £100,000-a-year job selling advertising for the free screens Lord Sugar has been entrepreneurially installing in clammy doctors’ surgeries.

It’s a great game all the same, and one series that I will voluntarily tune in to for pure escapism. Mind you, I never want to see a follow-up programme – be far too depressing.

SOMEWHERE IN THEbowels of the week, Newsnightsaw Jeremy Paxman giddily questioning an unamused American lexicographer about the veracity of a claim, made by the website Global Language Monitor, that the English language was about to embrace its millionth word. Paxman begged to differ, opining that English, which is the language of the technical and scientific community, is probably already carrying closer to a million and a half words in its rattlebag.

Regardless of Paxo’s verbose scepticism, the twanging lexicographer was sticking to his shooter. Among the words in contention for the one millionth spot were “frugalistal” (being frugal?), “chiconomics” (looking cool even though you’re skint), “de-friend” and “de-follow” (things you do on Twitter, a planet I don’t inhabit), and my favourite, the rather more poetic “noob”, which is, I think, some derogatory term for a newcomer or greenhorn in the cyberictic sense (oh look, my spell-check has just informed me that I made up a word of my own).

HAVING WATCHEDthe nostalgic, exhilarating, but deeply selective documentary, McBride's Invincibles: The Rugby Lions of 1974,I'd like to offer another new word to the spectacled lexicographer for his consideration: "ignoring-the-elephant-in-the-room-itis".

McBride's Invincibleswas a hearty tale, well-told and illustrated with reels of grainy 1970s footage, of the British and Irish Lions team who vanquished the Springboks during an all-conquering tour of South Africa at the height (and here's the rub) of the apartheid regime. These undoubtedly talented sportsmen flew to South Africa despite public protest and government condemnation, spent months in the country, annihilated the home side (much to the opposition's still-burning chagrin), and came home to a hero's welcome. And now there is a documentary to prove it, with various snowy-haired players contributing their rose-tinted memories and reliving the replays. These include the captain and coach, the legendary Willie John McBride, a practical, patrician man interviewed in a delicately pastoral garden in a primrose-and-pink sweater.

Now, I grew up in a household where a game of rugby was a damn sight more important than a full set of teeth, and where skullcaps, lurking like bandaged invisible heads, hid under the stairs. I learned, like lots of little girls, to sit quietly through hours of rugby, in front of other people's colour televisions, waiting for The Generation Gameto come on. I listened while the assembled pack of sitting-room fans exchanged bloodthirsty badinage, and I discovered that daring to suggest that the goys might have done better to stay at home, in solidarity with the dead, the injured, the dispossessed and the imprisoned, would earn a long spell emptying the ashtrays.

What I'm trying to say is, hey-ho baby, some things just don't change, do they? McBride's Invincibleswas a great old chinwag, but it could not bring itself to face the fact that, although these men were fantastic rugby players and although it was immensely satisfying to see them dashing around the sunburnt pitch like hirsute oak trees, it was immoral for the team to travel given the shattering injustice of a South African political system that was far more savage, brutal and physical than anything that could possibly happen on a pitch.

As former anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain said, when allowed a moment or two to sketch the bigger picture, the claim that the Lions were expressing some kind of solidarity with the black population by beating the crap out of white sportsmen was a “specious argument” to disguise the fact that a wrong was being perpetrated.

Anyway, great footage of the lads on the lash in Kruger National Park, sideburns and snow-white stomachs glittering in the unfamiliar sun. A strangely provocative film.

Highland fling: Desperately seeking refuge in a sleepy Scottish village

Just to alert you to a frothy and pretty desperate new eight-part drama the BBC is laying out for your delectation on its Sunday-night summer picnic table. Hope Springsis a self-conscious comedy starring Alex Kingston, formerly a formidable Brit doc in ER, now back on home turf.

Kingston plays Ellie Lagden, who has just taken the rap for her lyin’, cheatin’ husband and served four years at her majesty’s pleasure. The series follows Ellie and three ex-crim mates, all women, as they attempt to escape for a bit of sun, sea and shiatsu in Barbados, having cleverly double-crossed Ellie’s vicious spouse and stuffed three million of his ill-gotten quid into their handbags. Only life ain’t that simple, mate, and they find themselves at the departure gates without a passport between them and with “the firm” on their trail.

Not to worry. Through the devious means of sub-standard scriptwriting, the ladettes (appropriately arranged in a variety of hair colour, ages and fashion nous) steal a car and head to Scotland. Suddenly, they find themselves proprietors of Annette Crosbie’s spooky and sticky hotel, Hope Springs, from where they begin to shake up the sleepy but sinister local village with their turquoise eyeliner.

This is a predictable farce populated by a cast of enthusiastic thespians playing a variety of baddies and goodies with many and varied Scottish accents, all of them strutting their stuff with the barely contained excitement of people who think they're in the new Ballykissangel(they're not). Do yourself a favour and go for a walk instead.

tvreview@irishtimes.com