Sweet and sour
Simon Hoggart
he Apprentice (BBC2, Mondays) comes / from the States, trailing clouds of ratings. It stars the property tycoon Donald Trump, the executive producer is Donald Trump, and it's been made by Trump Productions. Good to see that multitasking exists even in the featherbedded television industry! The plan is that Donald Trump takes 16 ambitious, thrusting young men and women (or 'entrepoors' as he calls them) from across America. Over 14 weeks, they will be put through tasks to demonstrate their entrepoorship, and the winner will get 'the dream job of a lifetime' working for —Donald Trump. Here they will earn a very large sum of money for one year — or slightly less than a lifetime. Still, you also get to appear on television, which may be some consolation when you're sent back to sell real estate in Des Moines.
Donald Trump plays God, a role in which he clearly feels comfortable. Winners are taken up to see him in his suite at the top of Trump Tower, a series of rooms so gobsmackingly vile and so loathsomely over the top that they may be the only interior in New York to clash with Central Park. The decor is far grander than Versailles. It is clearly meant to remind people of heaven, as imagined by someone who first found his faith in a Las Vegas casino. Here Trump, with the aid of two St Peters, his company executives, decides 'who goes up to the suite, or down to the street' — into the arms of Trump, or down into the fires of Gehenna where the ordinary people scurry about their ill-paid business.
What shall it profit a man, I found myself thinking, if he shall gain the whole earth, and still have Donald Trump's taste in bathroom fittings?
The assumption behind the programme is not only that greed is good, but also that it is the only moral criterion we have. If you put your faith in Trump, he will reward you with riches beyond price. This is not the wealth of the spirit, which flies away as dust in the wind, but bonds, shares, stock options and hard cash. In Trump's world, money is the only verity, the only tangible reality, the sole reason for our existence.
After all this worship of the golden calf, the first actual trial seemed anti-climactic: the eight men and the eight women were sent out separately to sell lemonade. The women did far better than the men. Trump, his face scowling in the semi-darkness, decreed the men to have failed as entrepoors, and by implication as human beings. What went unmentioned was that the women — all glamorous, with perfect hair, teeth and busts — had succeeded by selling their lemonade for $5 a glass, which included $4 for a kiss. This technique would probably not have worked for the men, nor for the women if, for instance, they were selling cars or computers.
The programme is horrible, grisly, demeaning and shameful. I hope to catch several future episodes.
The same principle of greed can be seen at work in Deadwood (Sky One, Tuesdays), which stars Ian McShane in HBO's makeover of the traditional western. Except that they haven't really made it over. All the men are mean, violent, thieving varmints, and all the women are saintly. Drunks get kicked into the mud. Mining claims are disputed. People cheat at cards. The opportunity to reinvent the genre from scratch has been ducked except in one area — everyone swears, all the time. I
cannot duplicate this in a conservatively inclined magazine, but here is a bowdlerised version of some typical dialogue: 'What you [making love] doing, you [to make lover 'Be careful, you [rooster-ticker], you and all the other Irooster-lickers]: 'You know what, your mouth looks like a [female genitalia].—Okay, you got me by the [male generative organs]: John Wayne would have been appalled, and, as for Roy Rogers, I do not dare to think.
It's all rather wearisome. Ironically, they could have used HBO's freedom to introduce real sex. Not shagging, but the concept that even on the frontier people had close, loving and physical relationships — something the old westerns were never able to tackle.
Himalaya with Michael PaIM (BBCI, Sundays) has Michael Patin crossing the eponymous mountain range being nice. This is agreeable, especially as the Hindu Kush, where he was this week, is home to many of the nastiest people on the planet, including perhaps Osama bin Laden. While news crews find massacres and torture, Patin discovers keen young cricketers, affable polo players, amiable dentists, enchanting schoolchildren and colourful street markets. It's very old fashioned, very nostalgic, very Blue Peter. The BBC could save money by combining such trips with hard news reporting. Fergal Keene would be seen there, his lip trembling, his voice catching. 'As we arrived, we saw unmistakeable evidence of a street market. A plastic bag blowing away. Marks in the dirt where once a stall was standing. The pitiful remains of a half-eaten samosa, and a child's coloured balloon, burst and torn, lying on the ground.. .
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