THE APPRENTICE, BBC1, 9pm
WHAT kinda flowers do you sell in your florists? Wreaths?!
So exclaims Lord Sugar in mock horror when he learns Elizabeth has been exhausting her team, sending them tearing round Bruges in a weary daze.
Tonight the teams are sent to the lovely Belgian city where they must offer guided tours to the passengers of a cruise ship.
Bruges is famous for its architecture and its beautiful cobbled streets and canals, so naturally one of the teams opts for a Segway tour, bumping the silly, wobbling things over the ancient paving stones. There are also walking tours where the candidates can’t find the sights, relying on a paper map and wandering in endless, frustrating circles, while one of them moans she’s not good with facts.
There is such idiocy in this episode that you’ll wonder if it might be a comedy.
DETECTORISTS, BBC4, 10pm
WHEN I pressed “play” on my preview copy I thought I’d been sent the wrong show. Instead of seeing two old pals pottering in the fields, I saw something which looked like The Apprentice: a young man in a suit is striding through glassy offices in a fancy skyscraper – but then all becomes clear. These hotshots are planning a low-carbon business and aim to set up work in the fields favoured by our two detectorists.
“Is there a Nobel Prize for metal detecting?” wonders Lance.
“Should be,” announces Andy, with his metal detector proudly slung over his shoulder.
Ahhh, relax: we’re soon back in their cosy chats, with Lance asking Toby who he’d invite to a dinner party. Definitely not Jesus or Stephen Fry, he snorts. “They get invited to these imaginary dinner parties all the time. Probably get bored and bolshy.”
But life is tense for Andy as he’s now living with his snooty mother-in-law, played by Diana Rigg, and Lance is troubled by his daughter’s “waccy baccy”.
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