The Apprentice, BBC1
The nature of the task made for an anticlimactic boardroom showdown. No money was involved, so it was up to Sir Alan to choose between two campaigns which were, by any objective measure, both dismal failures. With Kimberly, Lorraine and Philip facing the chop, the well-trained viewer could easily predict the outcome. Philip can't go yet - he's too awful - and Lorraine must stay as his whiney, calculating foil. Kimberly, the team leader, was doomed.
Tim Dowling, The Guardian
The Apprentice, BBC1
“The Apprentice is beginning to be a lot about Philip, the Geordie estate agent who handily - for an incipient heart-throb - always emerges from his bedroom topless. In this task he proposed such a stupid idea, it says a lot about his powers of persuasion that his other team-mates didn't successfully shoot it down. His idea was for a superhero who was clad in pants that he kept putting on the wrong way round.”
Tim Teeman, The Times
The Apprentice, BBC1
“We've had a bit of depression in this boardroom over the last few weeks... it's time for a bit of laughter," said Sir Alan, dispatching the winning team at the end of the latest episode. Something similar might have been said of The Apprentice itself at the beginning of last night's programme. So far, it's been fine, but not exactly vintage stuff... and decidedly short on YouTube gold, the sort of jaw-dropping, did-you-see-that-bit moment that gets a series talked about the next day. Last night, made up for it, with easily the funniest episode so far.”
Tom Sutcliffe. The Independent
Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture, BBC3
“It's easy to think that the old way is how farming should be, that it's somehow gone all wrong since then, but it's also hard not to be impressed by the technological advances that have made fruit more affordable and growing it more profitable. The machine that automatically sticks tomato seedlings into the ground, for example, is mesmerising. They demonstrated how they used to do it by hand, with two people, and I was bored after half a row. The machine I could watch all day.”
Tim Dowling, The Guardian
Mud, Sweat and Tractors: The Story of Agriculture, BBC3
“This is a brilliant documentary series: with its use of archive home video it is both a loving and moving memorial to farming days long gone, yet with a clear eye on today's methods of production also a terrible indictment of how we've disposed, so cavalierly, of generations of rural experience and stewardship. Ultimately, the “green and pleasant land” we lay such proud claim to will suffer.”
Tim Teeman, The Times
The Speaker, BBC2
“The Speaker continues to have problems, despite the fact that Alastair Campbell pitched up this week to give them a crash course in tricolons, anaphora and epistrophe, and other rhetorical tricks. Their task was to make a political speech to a group of Surrey residents about some local issue, with the "electorate" then voting to give the most persuasive speaker a free pass into the next round. Campbell was refreshingly direct about the fact that they'd all taken the line of least resistance when it came to pitching an argument, but the real problem here is that they can only show you tiny chunks of the speakers' performance without making you want to jab feverishly at the channel changer, and a challenge show that can't wallow in the way the challenge is achieved has a real editing problem.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent
The Speaker, BBC2
“It's the sheer nerve of this series that wins you over. Most TV programmes think they have to try very hard to win your attention and are consequently filled to the brim with heaving cleavages or unsupportable claims about the information they're just about to give you if you come back after the commercial break.”
Matt Baylis, Daily Express
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