Review: ‘The Apprentice UK’

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The U.S. reality show starring Donald Trump gets a tougher boss and a stiffer upper lip with Sir Alan Sugar.

While most American reality game shows are based on European models, back in 2005 the BBC reversed the westward flow with a London take on NBC’s “The Apprentice.” : “The Apprentice.” Now that version, currently in its fifth season and featuring self-made billionaire Sir Alan Sugar in the role of Donald Trump, is getting a belated stateside rebroadcast. Slightly rechristened “The Apprentice UK,” it premieres tonight on BBC America.

As in the original, wannabe moguls -- ‘the best of Britain’s young business prospects,’ they’re called here -- present themselves to the host, whose success they hope to emulate. They’re lodged in a fancy dorm, split into teams and given stunt-challenges that relate thematically, if not always practically, to the business of business. (They go out and sell flowers. They invent a new toy.) Each week the winning team gets a prize (a ride on the London Eye, a day out shooting skeet), while members of the losing team scramble to throw one another under the nearest bright red double-decker bus. Like nearly every such competition on TV, it is designed to bring out the worst in people, to catch them in or prompt them to displays of inflated self-regard, Machiavellian self-interest and catty spite. The satisfaction such shows provide is not so much a matter of seeing the best person win as it is watching teacher throw the bad kids out of class.

Read more: ‘The Apprentice U.K.’ review

-- Robert Lloyd

Photo: BBC