Okay people let's get seriously honest here - American reality TV is so much more dramatic and exciting than anything the British manage to conjure up and this is perfectly demonstrated by the Celebrity Apprentice USA, which I watched at 1:00am this morning.
Firstly the production value is just crazy. Instead of Lord Alan Sugar's shitty grey boardroom which isn't even actually a boardroom, it's a studio, Donald Trump has a lavish, wooden-effect crazy Apprentice dungeon where he grills the candidates. He sits in a red leather throne whilst Sugar has to make do with a budget chair from Staples that even poor people can buy - the horror!!
Now I realise that the series I am currently watching is the celebrity version and so all the money raised from the tasks is given to a charity of each celebrity's choice, but there seems to be no regard for even basic business acumen. Not once in the whole task did anyone mention budget, margins, or a unique selling point. Even in the British, albeit kind of shit version of Celebrity Apprentice which is usually added to the schedule during charity telethons, the celebrities still have to use their brains to make sure it's vaguely business-like, whereas the whole focus the the US version seemed to be 'how many famous people can I get to come to the pizzeria by ringing them and shouting down the phone?' The candidates were basically given all the tools they needed by Donald Trump to run the shop, which included some people to actually show them how too cook pizzas which I'm pretty sure they could have worked out by themselves.
During the task there was the usual bickering which is universal in The Apprentice no matter what country it's from. However, the bickering wasn't just 'you're going to lose us this task' it actually got physical between singer David Cassidy and reality star Richard Hatch who I have never heard of. I have to actually give credit to the production team for casting some seriously big celebrities. They've got Meat Loaf, Gary Busey (who I think might just go fucking nuts at some point), Star Jones, La Toya Jackson and Dionne Warwick to name a few battling it out to raise as much money as they can for charity, and they are as passionate as ever. Now I think it might just be my internalised 'stiff upper lip' attitude that I have developed as a British person, but I find all the emotion and hugging cringey as hell. This was the first episode of the 11th season and so at the beginning, Donald asked each what their charity was and this was good because it gave the viewer some context, but then it sort of developed into a group counselling session as we had people admitting they had serious illnesses and open heart surgery, and all the way through I was hiding behind a pillow to protect my cold British heart.
One of the things that I thought was also quite odd in comparison to the UK version, was that the advisers in this show were Donald's own children Ivanka and Donald Jr. They arrived at the group's pizzeria in really flash, shiny black cars (I don't know what model because I am ignorant to these things) and were like 'what's up?'. Yeah really professional. Then Ivanka spoke up in the boardroom regarding the whole issue with David Cassidy and Richard Hatch and said she was shocked that they had a fight and lost because they looked so harmonious when she came along for all of five minutes. That made me laugh. Despite the fact that when I watched it I had to squash down any part of my brain that was trying to be the least bit reasonable or remind me that this was supposed to be a business show, I found it really enjoyable to watch. I was laughing my head off when poor La Toya Jackson was trying to remember what the girls' silly name 'A.S.A.P' stood for - which by the way was 'Actors Singers Authors and Professionals'. Not that the boys actually did much better as Gary wanted to call their group 'Sperm Farmers' but in the end settled for 'Backbone' thank God!
Basically the whole show is just one big pat on the back to the celebrities' egos. They spend the majority of their time telling us what amazing philanthropists they are by donating serious sums of money to charity. However, it is entertaining and I will continue to watch for as long as I can before my face is permanently scarred by all that cringing.
