It’s twenty years since The Apprentice first appeared on British TV screens. But, as David Hendy shows, the hit series – once famously described as a ‘surprisingly enjoyable backstabbing reality show’ – is only one example of a rich history of 大象传媒 programmes attempting to capture the highs and lows of the UK workplace.
When The Apprentice was first broadcast in February 2005, the official-sounding description was 鈥榓 business reality show鈥�. Its true identity, as the Guardian鈥檚 mischievous reviewer, Charlie Brooker, divined from the start, would turn out to be rather different: a reality show all about backstabbing.
The American original had been screened only the year before, starring Donald Trump in the role of presiding business guru. When the independent production company Talkback Thames brought the series to the 大象传媒, a few changes had been in order. The Trump role was taken by the rather less flamboyant founder of Amstrad, Alan Sugar. The tendency in the Trump version to concentrate on contestants with 鈥榲ery good teeth and very short skirts鈥� was also dropped.
The basic format, though, was much the same. Over twelve weeks we viewers would be educated about what makes good 鈥榖usiness sense鈥�. We鈥檇 learn about leadership and about team-building in the workplace. But as we watched a group of men and women perform a series of just-about-manageable tasks in order to compete for a well-paid job with Sugar - buying items cheaply and selling them at a mark-up, organising 鈥榚xperiences鈥� for tourists , or, as in this very first episode, selling 拢500 worth of flowers to commuters on the streets of London - we鈥檇 also, of course, be hugely entertained:
The Sunday Times said The Apprentice was 鈥榥ot just a game show: it鈥檚 a business school.鈥� But if so, it was teaching us a rather salutary lesson about business in the early twentieth century: that this was a world in which sharp practice could sometimes pay dividends. And for most viewers the real pleasure, as Charlie Brooker pointed it, lay in watching 鈥�14 odious, over-confident wannabe entrepreneurs, every single one of whom you will learn to hate twice as much as Hitler鈥�.
The artful combination of business school and vicarious entertainment made the first series into the hit of 大象传媒 Two鈥檚 spring schedule, with around 4 million watching the final episode. According to one newspaper columnist, The Apprentice had become 鈥楶op Idol for the corporate world鈥�. It had made business 鈥榮exy鈥�.
Work in 鈥榯he common cause鈥�
It鈥檚 hard to imagine the 大象传媒 of the 1920s and 1930s 鈥� the 大象传媒 of Lord Reith 鈥� setting out to make business 鈥榮exy鈥�. The vision of what made 鈥榞ood鈥� broadcasting was different back then. So, too, the world of work, since Britain was still very much a country of manufacturing, big industry, dirty, noisy factory floors. But the 大象传媒 motto was all about 鈥榥ation鈥� speaking unto 鈥榥ation鈥�. Radio producers knew that part of their job was to educate their largely middle class listenership about the very different lives that millions of their less fortunate fellow citizens experienced.
Staff in the 大象传媒鈥檚 lively and adventurous North Region, based in Manchester, were at the forefront of this early documentary movement. They鈥檇 take their recording equipment into the kinds of otherworldly environments where cotton was being spun in vast mills, or coal was being dug deep underground, or 鈥� as in this 1937 feature made by Geoffrey Bridson 鈥� to the vast, sweat-filled blast furnaces of Sheffield where men forged steel out of molten iron on behalf of the nation:
Steel was an ambitious, almost cinematic attempt to evoke in sound and music a 鈥榯ypical鈥� industrial workplace of the time 鈥� its relentless rhythms, its monumental scale. And you can tell that Geoffrey Bridson was in awe of the British industrial worker. He wanted listeners to recognise the abstract power and energy of the steelworker鈥檚 labours, the immense contribution he made to the national economy. But the workers themselves were strikingly absent: at no point do we actually hear anyone speaking spontaneously in his own voice.
Bridson put this right the following year when he portrayed 鈥榯he story of a way of life鈥� in a Durham mining town. But it was the outbreak of war in 1939 that really set a new path for the 大象传媒. The Corporation鈥檚 chief role during the Second World War was to sustain civilian morale on the Home Front. That meant programmes that weren鈥檛 just 鈥榓bout鈥� ordinary people, but programmes which, in the words of the wartime Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, made 鈥榰s all feel that we are working together in the common cause to win this war.鈥�
Bevin actually spoke those words while introducing one of the 大象传媒鈥檚 key wartime radio shows, Workers鈥� Playtime. The series was one of several so-called 鈥榝actory鈥� programmes which broadcasters 鈥� and Ministers - hoped would combine gentle encouragement to keep meeting production targets while relieving the tedium involved.
So, instead of endless exhortations simply to work harder Workers鈥� Playtime offered uncomplicated live entertainment by bringing an 鈥榓ll-star cast of radio and music hall artists鈥� to a different factory canteen each week for a live lunchtime broadcast:
Within two years of its launch, Workers鈥� Playtime had visited 257 factories and entertained some 270,000 workers in person. For those involved, it usually made even the dullest work seem just that little bit more bearable, even if only fleetingly.
Many of the employees ushered before the microphone in programmes such as Workers鈥� Playtime were women, of course. They鈥檇 been encouraged 鈥� and sometimes required 鈥� to join the production-lines of munitions factories or fill-in posts left vacant by men who鈥檇 joined the armed services.
And when it came to women taking up roles traditionally assigned to men, the 大象传媒 itself was very much part of the wartime vanguard. In the Corporation鈥檚 engineering division, for example, they were soon to be found employed in studios and transmitter stations, mixing programmes and sound effects, switching signals, performing routine maintenance, designing circuit boards.
In this extract from an interview in the 大象传媒鈥檚 own Oral History Collection, Dorothy Preston described how she became one of the first women to be employed as a 鈥楾echnical Assistant鈥� or, to give it the title used back in the 1940s, 鈥榃oman Operator鈥�:
鈥楢 very special brand of person鈥�
By the end of the war, around 800 women had been trained as engineers by the 大象传媒. But with servicemen returning home after 1945, many of them, like women in many other workplaces across Britain, found themselves rapidly shunted aside.
Fortunately, the post-war years saw other social trends, including the rise of service industries and part-time administrative jobs, the expansion of the welfare state, and the growth of the British university sector. This created a burgeoning range of white-collar jobs - in teaching, arts administration, local government, the Civil Service, and broadcasting. The Foreign Office and the 大象传媒 soon regularly featured right at the top of any list of first-choice destinations for high-flying graduates looking for rewarding 鈥� and secure - jobs.
Those 大象传媒 recruits who worked in television recognised they were especially lucky. They鈥檇 joined a growing, glamourous industry where ideas and creativity were valued. One of the great high-flyers of the 1950s and 1960s was Huw Wheldon, who鈥檇 go on to edit the pioneering TV arts series Monitor and later still become a senior 大象传媒 manager.
In his interview for the 大象传媒 Oral History Collection, Wheldon described a place filled with what he called 鈥榓 very special brand of person 鈥� restless and committed.鈥� 鈥業 wanted to be part of that community鈥�, he said.
He drew a parallel with the response of the writer E.M. Forster when he'd been asked why he wrote books. 鈥淚, like most people, work for two reasons鈥�, Forster is supposed to have said. 鈥淔irstly to make a living and secondly to gain the admiration of those whose admiration I admire鈥�. Wheldon then went on to suggest that it was largely the culture of the 大象传媒 and the leadership of his own immediate boss, Grace Wyndham Goldie, that ensured he had a huge amount of personal freedom when running Monitor:
For the vast majority of us, though - even in the Swinging Sixties - work was far less exciting. If it wasn鈥檛 dirty or noisy, it was likely to be humdrum 鈥� a means to an end.
By the end of the decade, 35 per cent of this national workforce was made up by women 鈥� a figure only a little higher than before the war. The next two decades, however, were to witness a sharp increase in this figure: by 1990, women made up 43 per cent.
As the numbers rose, the workplace itself became a fertile ground for debates about equality 鈥� and not just over the issue of equal pay for equal work.
In February 1974, the 大象传媒 Two screened a discussion series called, simply, Women at Work. One episode offered a stark reminder that many of the women who were now in paid employment also had to continue doing the major share of unpaid domestic labour at home:
Yvonne and Bren
This tangled relationship between our working lives and our home lives was also the subject of a BAFTA-winning 大象传媒 television drama series first broadcast in January 2000: Clocking Off.
The opening series was created and written by Paul Abbott, a hugely talented playwright from Burnley whose own experiences growing up in a troubled family had informed much of his earlier work on 大象传媒 Radio 4 and in ITV鈥檚 Coronation Street.
Clocking Off followed the lives of workers in a Manchester bed linen factory, focusing on a different character in turn. Abbott had originally wanted to call the series Factory 鈥� but the 大象传媒 thought it would put people off. At first, he was unsure about the new title, Clocking Off, but soon came round to it. He realised it somehow captured the question at the core of each story: 鈥榟ow well do you know the person working next to you?鈥�
In the second episode, we followed 鈥榊vonne鈥檚 Story鈥�. Sarah Lancashire played the role of Yvonne, a woman who鈥檇 burned her house down after her boyfriend kicked her out:
What鈥檚 striking about Clocking Off is that the factory floor is almost incidental to the drama. It鈥檚 what brought a disparate group of people together. But most of the real action 鈥� the simmering disputes, the fallings-out, the comings-together 鈥� takes place not at the coalface itself, but in nearby offices, the loos, the car park outside, and, of course, at home at the end of the day.
The balance between workplace and home was completely reversed in the late-1990s comedy series Dinnerladies, set in the canteen of 鈥楬WD Components鈥�, a fictional factory in Manchester. The writer, co-producer, and star was Victoria Wood. Which meant lots of fine humour and plenty of double entendres. Wood鈥檚 character, Bren, leads what the newspaper reviewer Lucy Mangan described as 鈥榓n all-female, mostly menopausal cast鈥�. Some of their quick-fire lines 鈥� 鈥淎nd where has it got you, having a pelvic floor like a bulldog clip?鈥�, 鈥淗e played my body like a pinball machine: I lit up, paid out 鈥� and no tilting鈥� would, Mangan suggested, 鈥榣ive down the ages.鈥�
But in Dinnerladies the canteen itself is the only location that matters. The work of preparing meals can be repetitive and is invariably taken-for-granted by upper management, yet it鈥檚 usually valued, deep-down at least, by those who do it. There鈥檚 pride in doing properly what needs to be done. It鈥檚 where friendships are made and tested - a social setting where, as in the first ever episode, 鈥楳onday鈥�, even the breadman鈥檚 failure to deliver the 鈥榞ranary torpedoes鈥� really matters:
鈥楤ullshit Jobs鈥�
Dinnerladies was broadcast in the closing years of the twentieth century. The threat of closure constantly hung over Bren and her team. As it would have done if any of these characters had been real, for it was screened at the end of a period when there鈥檇 been a decades-long decline in large-scale manufacturing and a parallel growth in service industries 鈥� new kinds of jobs which demanded new kinds of skills.
The look and feel of the workplace 鈥� and our attitude to it - was changing in fundamental ways, too. The work-station and desktop computer was becoming ubiquitous, along with days spent completing spreadsheets or emails.
In 2013, the anthropologist David Graeber surveyed hundreds of people who told him their jobs had now become meaningless. They associated self-worth with work. But the work they did seemed abstract, pointless, even frankly unnecessary 鈥� except to those who enjoyed ticking boxes. Graeber called them 鈥榖ullshit jobs鈥�. But, as it happened, the kind of workplace where these kinds of jobs thrived had been stripped bare over a decade earlier in Ricky Gervais鈥� and Stephen Merchant鈥檚 ground-breaking comedy series, The Office.
David Brent, the character played by Ricky Gervais, was the central 鈥榤iddle management鈥� figure around whom the drama of The Office unfolded. But it was also important that the fictional stationery company in which he worked was not in some major international city or glamourous coastal resort but in John Betjeman鈥檚 famously unlovely Slough. As viewers we also cared greatly about Tim 鈥� played by Martin Freeman: he appeared to be the only one who could instantly see, like we could at home, the absurdly low-stakes power plays that unfolded daily amid the low-hum of the computer terminals:
By 2014 even the 大象传媒 was willing to recognise that it, too, might be harbouring more than its fair share of Graeber鈥檚 bullshit jobs. This, at least, appears to be the real theme of the hit comedy series W1A which was first screened that year.
Here was a show that hinted at the inner workings of a national broadcaster which, buffeted by the constant threat of negative coverage and desperate to do the right thing 鈥� or at least to be seen doing the right thing 鈥� now found itself constantly tying itself in knots through endless 鈥榗risis鈥� meetings filled with a heady mixture of marketing-speak and buck-passing:
Shopfloor revelations
The 大象传媒 of W1A seemed a world away from the 大象传媒 of the 1960s evoked earlier by Huw Wheldon in his 大象传媒 Oral History interview.
But even at the start of the twenty-first century, there were plenty of people willing to stand up for the corporate world 鈥� to argue that any job was worth doing if it was done well. The problem for businesses now though was that it was often hard for an employee to do a job well in the face of those twin British diseases of chronic under-investment and what appeared to be a growing gulf of understanding between management and workforce.
Back to the Floor, which ran for several series between 1997 and 2002, had sought to highlight this gulf between top and bottom and offer a dose of shock medicine. Each episode would see a senior company executive go undercover in their own organisation so they could start to appreciate their employees鈥� insights about what needed changing if things were to run more smoothly on the shop-floor.
In one episode, we saw the head of the travel company Unijet, Terry Brown, spending an uncomfortable week as one of his company鈥檚 holiday reps in Tenerife:
We鈥檙e now in an era which no longer promises a job for life - an era of short-term contracts, hire-and-refire management techniques, zero-hour contracts. The outlook, especially for those entering the world of work for the very first time, has never been so hard to discern.
One of the ways the 大象传媒 has responded to our collective need to rethink our future prospects has been through its various educational and training initiatives. 大象传媒 Select, an overnight television service which ran briefly in the early-1990s, attempted to offer advice about benefits and training programmes. 大象传媒 Bitesize has outlived 大象传媒 Select, and still supports school children by providing accessible study materials and revision aids. Nowadays, it has its own 鈥楥areers鈥� section.
Then there have been programmes like All Over the Workplace.
The series was first screened on C大象传媒 in 2016, and was intended to give schoolchildren a taste of what it might be like to work in various professions, such as medicine, politics, policing, and space science. In this opening episode, the presenter, Alex Riley, took young Louis and Jess along to a Michelin-starred restaurant in London to discover what it might be like to be a chef:
Workplace Dystopias
The C大象传媒 series offered us the workplace as a site of high stress but also genuine excitement. More recently, though, we adult viewers have been in for a more dystopian ride.
In the world of professional cooking alone, we鈥檝e had the UK television drama series Boiling Point and the US import, The Bear, both portraying a high-wire existence that鈥檚 clearly no good whatsoever for one鈥檚 physical or mental health. Fictional portraits, of course. But by all accounts uncomfortably close to the truth.
For a twisted take on David Graeber鈥檚 bullshit jobs we鈥檝e the drama of Apple TV鈥檚 Severance which gives us a team of office workers who鈥檇 probably dream of the quiet life in a Slough stationery office if only they hadn鈥檛 had chips implanted in their brains which ensure their work and home lives are kept entirely separate in their own memories 鈥� and which even obscure who on earth they鈥檙e actually working for.
As for that cut-throat world of big-business and high-finance 鈥� that world which many of the contestants on The Apprentice seem still to dream of joining one day 鈥� we鈥檝e had three seasons of Industry to warn us about its tragic flaws.
Series one, set in the 鈥榮exed-up, drug-fuelled trading floor鈥� of a city bank, the fictional 鈥楶ierpoint鈥�, was quickly labelled the first 鈥楪en Z workplace drama鈥�. It showed us what the described as 鈥榓 workplace of excess and extremity, where people are pushed, and push themselves, beyond all rational limits鈥�.
It's also a workplace that is crazily diffuse: deals get done in hotel bars and nightclub toilets just as often as on the trading floor itself. Now each human interaction is also a transaction, Industry seems to be saying. Work has permeated every area and every hour of its characters鈥� lives 鈥� to terrible effect, of course, even if these same characters are so enamoured of this exploitative world that they can鈥檛 admit it:
With Industry we鈥檙e clearly a long way from the joyous camaraderie of Dinnerladies, let alone the stirring efforts of Geoffrey Bridson鈥檚 1930s steelworkers.
So perhaps, after all this upheaval and change, we should pause to congratulate The Apprentice for still being with us and bucking the trend.
Twenty years and counting'! And, of course, there鈥檚 that reassuringly familiar cast we want to see: business hopefuls - all still optimistically giving us 鈥�110 percent鈥� as they backstab and bloviate their way to the boardroom and that ultimate showdown with 鈥楽ir Alan鈥�.
Written by David Hendy, Emeritus Professor, University of Sussex.