The Young Apprentice
Greed, ambition and a healthy obsession with ruthless tactics – all at the tender age of 16; reality television has never been so good. Back for its second season, The Young Apprentice sees Britain’s “best and brightest” youngsters compete for a coveted £25,000 cash prize. Apart from their oversized suits, the batch of new contestants look like your average, run-of-the-mill teenagers, but as soon as they open their mouths you begin to see that this is far from the truth. Armed with buckets of arrogant confidence these teenage entrepreneurs are just as vindictive and resolute as their adult counterparts. They are fully equipped with generic capitalist mantras like “no one intimidates me because I know that I am better than them,” and “money does not buy happiness, but neither does poverty.” [No, we don’t quite understand that one either…] It really makes you think they’re lovely, well-rounded individuals.
Now, let’s be honest, the only real reason we watch The Young Apprentice is to indulge our unhealthy appetite for bitching, scheming and good old manipulation, and after watching the first episode, our raging appetites should have been totally satisfied. There were definitely some characters that were notable for the wrong reasons – take James McCullagh for example, the Irish economics enthusiast; he was the most vocal in his group and by far the most annoying. The only phrase he seemed to bellow out during his group discussions were “I completely disagree.” And let’s not forget Gbemi Okunlola, the feisty fashion designer from Peckham, who was hilarious while shouting down the phone after buying too little fruit for her team’s ice cream task.
So far The Young Apprentice is absolutely delivering on all fronts; inflated egos, conflict and cringe inducing one-liners from Lord Sugar – even the boardroom showdown was epic. Mere seconds had passed before everyone was scrambling to save themselves, and throwing their team mates under the proverbial bus – utterly captivating.