The Apprentice: The Final

[BIG SPOILER ALERT! . . .]

Aah. It can only ever be a minor letdown, the final episode, shaded with melancholy that it's all over for another year, and the sinking feeling that there isn't even a proper firing at the end of it. And all that hype. Even people who don't care about the show will know who Ruth and Michelle are by now. I did my bit, giving my considered opinion on Radio Ulster's Arts Extra, despite a terrible line, this evening. But what is there to say? It's all showbiz. It's stage-managed. They're not really the 14 brightest business hopes in the country but those who were most likely to make the best television. It's all clever editing. Of course it is! It's also brilliant. We've invested eleven weeks in it, and this is our reward.

Would it be the Badger (tabloid currency: she likes ladies) or the Blonde (tabloid currency: she likes Syed)? I was always rooting for Ruth, probably due to my soft spot for the Midlands accent, but last week's revelations about Michelle's tough upbringing - music to Sir Alan's gruff ears - put her ahead. For the final task, laying on an evening in a long, thin corridor in Tower Bridge with a fabulous view through some metal girders (a truly thankless task), Sir Alan gently hinted that it could be themed around, say, James Bond or the Moulin Rouge or the can-can, so that's what they did. After all, is this programme not ultimately about pleasing Sir Alan? Michelle went for the "Double-Oh-Heaven" theme and optimistically chose - from the pool of recent firees - two people who disliked her (Paul and Syed) and three who disliked each other (Paul, Syed and Sharon). And so the soap opera came to pass, with Paul and Syed giving us some of the best comedy of the series ("Cock," being the quote of the run). Ruth had the nicer team (Ansell, Tuan and a seemingly self-gagged Jo), but the stupider idea: a murder mystery evening - in a corridor! Sir Alan told them it was shit (I'm not sure I like him personally intervening), and they added some can-can dancers, but not "traditional" ones, in case anyone thought they were just trying to butter him up.

Not as many highlights as previous tasks. The knowledge that our supersalesmen, Paul and Syed, had only sold four tickets at the end of a hard day was chest-tightening, and their Laurel and Hardy act was never less than entertaining. Michelle's droning, humourless, upwardly-inflected voice began to grate on me. She only perked up when kissing Syed, much to his annoyance ("On national television?"). Any woman who can fancy him goes down in my estimation, especially when she starts using his catchphrases ("A hundred and ten per cent") by romantic osmosis. I would have rather stood on the Bridge itself and watched the lights reflected in the Thames than attend either bash, but many did, and on points, the Bond evening looked better. Watching the murder-mystery actors and dancers gamely attempting to stretch out their act by moving down the corridor was painful, as was Sir Alan's face when faced with one of them. It all meant that the series went out with a whimper, not a bang.

The final boardroom, designed to keep us in perpetual suspense, also lacked drama. It could have gone either way, as Ruth had made more money but Michelle's night was more fun, and Sir Alan liked them both, so there was no friction, just a controlled impatience. I liked it when he dismissed Margaret and Nick, that was very dramatic, but otherwise, if it's true that they did actually film two endings, it was also a throw of the giant dice to decide. He went for Michelle, and there really is no point trying to second-guess his motives now. He's not one to have his head turned by a pretty lady, so it's nothing as sexist as that. Simply that Michelle is younger, I'd say. Ruth will no doubt write a self-help book like Miriam did, or get a column on next year's website. Good luck to her. She won't need that sabbatical. As for Michelle, I'm sure we'll see as much of her as we did of Tim ie. not much. It's not about that. It's not about the six-figure salary, in the end. It's about the process. And the process has been glorious.

The Hairy Bikers were good tonight too.


Previous reviews:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten
Week Eleven

Paddy latest



Never mind the collapse of the British government, or the gigantic bluff being called by Iran, or the fact that we in the UK now take 30 million cholesterol drugs a year rather than actually change our diets to prevent heart disease - here are some photos taken yesterday and this morning of Paddy!



Although we've been keeping him in the spare bedroom since he arrived on Friday in order to acclimatise him before giving him full run of the house and introducing him to a remarkably calm Pepper (we've been exchanging their scents, but Pepper doesn't seem that bovvered), this morning we shut the door on a snoozing Peps and allowed Paddy to wander the landing and go down the stairs. No pressure. Indeed, in textbook kitten style, he kept dashing back to "his" room. He's back in there now.



He'll be out again tomorrow, for longer, and eventually, we'll let Pepper see him when he's in the protective pen we've hired from the vet's. (It's massive. I've been inside it already.) Paddy is alert, boundless, humorous, confident and going through that phase of biting your fingers.



I have been sleeping with him in the spare room, so he's not alone during this formative period (after all, he spent the first seven weeks of his life in a house full of kids and other cats and dogs), and I've been waking up in the night with his little face staring straight into my eyes. This means: get up, I want to play. He's a handful alright, and that's the fun of it.



Of all the toys we bought him (and this happened when Chilli and Peps were kits, but you sort of forget), it's the rolled-up ball of newspaper that he likes the most. I imagine this is how new parents feel. Although perhaps, in my case, less asthmatic.

Deer

In a break from kittens, here is a very poor photo I took the other evening of a deer on our patio. We live on a hill, and there is some National Trust land at the top of the hill, and deer occasionally wander down, through the back gardens without high fencing, to nibble at foliage and take fright whenever they hear anything that might constitute a human. They are beautiful, elegant creatures, who can jump over low fences from a standing start. This one, we think, is the female, and she looks as though she's with child. Over the previous two years we've seen her with assorted Bambis, who soon grew as large as their mother, and eventually moved on. (Perhaps they went to college.) One of the more glorious sights since moving out to the sticks has been to see the mother deer relaxing under the willow tree on a summer's day. Anyway, it was quite a shock on Sunday evening when, whilst making homemade beefburgers, I looked out of the kitchen window and saw her deery ears. It's rare that they venture up onto the patio, but she was clearly enjoying whatever climbing vine grows without our intervention in the flower beds. I tiptoed upstairs to get a shot of her (better than a shot at her), but the moment you open a window to avoid flashback, she exits, pursued by nothing at all. I managed to get this shot through the glass, but it's not going to be winning any wildlife photography awards. Thought you might like to see it anyway. And be filled with mercy that I didn't headline this entry, D'oe!

It's there to make you read my review of Krakatoa: The Last Days, which was on BBC1 on Sunday evening.



Now, the very words drama-documentary generally chill my blood. They speak of Crimewatch reconstructions, a pernicious influence on modern telly if you ask me. Give me drama, or give me documentary. I'm a huge fan of both. But don't give me six of one, and half a dozen of the other. I was drawn to this mostly because it's a disaster movie, isn't it? A real-life event, the 1883 eruption of the Indonesian volcano of the same name, situated west of Java (as any fule kno), which brought forth six cubic miles of ash, pumice and shit, killing over 36,000 people, and whose explosion was the loudest ever recorded in history (they could hear it in Perth). The BBC promised, and delivered, excellent special effects. Clearly nothing to have the eggheads at Industrial Light & Magic leaping out windows, but much better than the equivalent one about Pompeii, and, as far as I could tell, based more reliably on factual account.

Also, it starred Rupert Penry-Jones (who has his own handsome, Adam Rickitt-style website), star of our beloved Spooks and the underrated North Square, whose chiselled, blonde good looks made him a shoo-in for a Dutch colonialist who came good under pressure. Normally, these drama-docs are cast from the lower tiers of thespian talent, but, alongside Olivia Williams, who's been in Hollywood films and everything, Penry-Jones indicated that this production was a cut above. And it was.

Well-structured over 90 minutes, with a number of eyewitness accounts woven together, but not too many. Four, in fact. The dialogue might not have been award-winning (first time writers, as far as I can make out), but it told the story well, and the money shots were dramatic indeed, not least the one where the steamboat rode out the tidal wave. There was something lacking, but not as much as I've come to expect from this hybrid genre, and the final scenes, with the survivors blackened and burned in a less-than-cosmetic way, made a mockery of the film Volcano where a light dusting of ash made all the black people and the white people and the Hispanic people of Los Angeles look the same colour, for a stupid point about all ethnic divisions being rubbed out by catastrophe (thus making the people of Hollywood feel great about themselves). No such hijacking here. This ended fairly badly for all concerned, and the shellshock was tangible. Well done, the BBC. But don't do it again. Dramatise, or documentarise, please. And give the special effects team the rest of the day off.