TV preview: 'Wanderlust' continues as 'The Apprentice' returns – everything to look forward to this week

The Apprentice format is still a compelling one with this year’s contestants a usual mix of know-it-alls and wannabes, says Sean O'Grady

‘The Apprentice’ is still good at squirrelling out the worst in people and highlighting hubris and folly (BBC)

Mixed feelings about the return of The Apprentice. I’m not quite sure what the show has done for the business empire of Lord Sugar (formerly plain Alan, formerly S’rallan), but it has given the world something called Katie Hopkins: For which it is hard to be grateful.

I can remember the first time that rebarbative personality with her piercing blue eyes turned up on our screens, and had a funny feeling about her then. Not so funny now, I suppose, all things considered. Given that The Apprentice was originally a vehicle for Donald Trump, you might say he is also, indirectly, responsible for her. Not on a par with breaking up Nato or starting a trade war with China, but still, she’s also there on the charge sheet.

Anyway, she’s busted (I think technically placed under a voluntary insolvency agreement, but same difference), and The Apprentice is still going strong, though, as I say, seemingly a vehicle for TV fame more than a primary source of supply for the higher echelons of Sugar’s companies. Michelle Dewberry is another example, come to think of it, currently star of Sky News gobfest The Pledge.

The Apprentice format is still a compelling one, because it is just so good at squirrelling out the worst in people and highlighting hubris and folly – after all, we all enjoy watching pride just before it meets its fall, and indeed reflecting on that fall in the back of a black cab home.

This year’s contestants are the usual mix of know-it-alls, wannabes and idiots. The question we always ask ourselves as we watch them make utter fools of themselves remains: if you’re so great, why haven’t you got your own thriving business already, and why on earth would you want to work for someone else? Because that’s the one point Alan Sugar always makes – that he couldn’t abide having some boss tell him what to do, so he started selling car aerials instead. Never been answered, and I doubt that this, the 14th series, will reveal the secret of the apprentices’ individual and collective failures.

Even more of a veteran, Have I Got News for You returns for another run, with Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, as ever, the king and clown prince of satire respectively, including the lesser wits around them.

This is, in fact, the 56th series, the abiding memories of which will, for me, always be the substitution of a tub of lard for the Rt Hon Roy Hattersley MP, the turn Ann Widdecombe did – game if nothing else – and Boris Johnson, back in the days when he was funny. Alexander Armstrong kicks off as guest host this time, with Naga Munchetty, the emerging power of brekkies TV, and comic Josh Widdicombe trying to hold their own. We will have to see if the Brexit morass has gone beyond parody.

The Great Model Railway Challenge sounds more like torture than light entertainment. In point of fact it rests snugly under the category “Channel 5 documentary”. I have to hand it to the upstart channel: it has no shortage of mad ideas for its innovative docs. This one is about a load of balding middle-aged blokes playing with toy trains, and if that doesn’t make for superb viewing, I don’t know what does.

The Big Audition, from ITV, has some potential I think. It is, as the title doesn’t really suggest, about what you might rudely call “little people” going for “little” jobs, rather than some gigantic cash prize or a recording contract or a £100,000 a year job with Alan Sugar. There’s a bloke who wants to be a Henry VIII tour guide, and an aspiring fitness presenter for a shopping channel. Debatable taste: therefore much promise.

Farther and Sun is a sweet little documentary that should touch hearts, and not just among the one in 10 families who have experience of the condition. It’s always been a bit controversial, dyslexia, with lots of people dismissing it, but when you recall that people such as Michael Heseltine and Eddie Izzard have the condition, you have to adjust your prejudices.

Which is where documentary maker Richard Macer comes in. He goes on a road trip with his dyslexic son Arthur to meet other dyslexics and shares his discoveries with us. These include the fact that big tech outfits such as Google and Nasa see the benefit in a “neuro diverse” work force (I’d known they recruit people on the autism spectrum too).

There is a deeply personal and slightly surprising narrative at the heart of this film, too: Richard really struggled at school just like his son and now, 40 years on, he is going to be assessed for dyslexia. There are many more in that position, it has to be said.

‘The Cry’ has the tough task of following BBC ratings hit ‘Bodyguard’ (DRG)

I think you’ll enjoy The Bank That Almost Broke Britain. Even now, a decade on, the effects of those half-remembered dramas are still reverberating their way around the economy, and, many believe, are the root cause for the twin phenomena of Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn – facile answers to complex problems. Some say. Or, put another way, the financial crisis was all about finding a way to pay off all that bad debt, but slowly and manageably, which means, collectively and as a nation, we’ve less left over for pay rises, higher living standards and better public services. Mystery solved, eh?

In spotlighting the collapse of the world’s biggest bank, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, in October 2008 and in particular the role played by its famous boss Fred “The Shred” Goodwin, the film manages to condense a complicated crisis into a simple tale of morality and politics. Interviews with the then-governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, Alistair Darling (then-chancellor of the Exchequer) and several of Fred’s old colleagues enlighten and entertain.

Sick of It is the latest way Karl Pilkington has devised to have some fun with Karl Pilkington, if you get my drift. Sick of It is based on a smart, thoughtful premise – the “inner voice” we all have, the yin vs the yang, the positive to the negative, variously restraining or encouraging our worst/best instincts. It’s been done, a bit, before, with Peep Show, and even Jiminy Cricket, perched on Pinocchio’s shoulder, but is none the worse for that.

Pilkington’s mind experiment makes an excellent case for not going out with a group of, say, 16 people to a restaurant. Why, though, has no one noticed it before? To pose such a question is to signal success in the demanding world of observational humour. Pilkington and collaborator Richard Yee are to be congratulated on such an original piece of work .

‘Sick of It’ is Karl Pilkington’s latest mind experiment (Sky)

Last, a little roundup of the main dramas. Now that the eponymous Bodyguard has gone off to get counselling, repair his family and collect some Baftas, we have The Cry occupying that prime BBC Sunday night slot. Following such a tough act, it’s unfair to be too harsh on it, so I’ll just leave it that it’s the story of a woman driven to despair when her newborn baby won’t stop crying. Very possibly, then, even more emotionally draining than Bodyguard.

Improving with the weeks is Wanderlust, now that the “open marriage” of the Richards (Joy and Alan, Toni Collette and Steve Mackintosh) is being subjected to some proper emotional stress testing.

Thursday night’s Press tries its best without, to my eyes, quite cracking the enigma of the modern media, though Joanna Scanlan, as DI Vivienne Deering, is doing a great job in Channel 4’s underrated northern police series No Offence. Enjoy.

The Apprentice (BBC1, Wednesday 9pm); Have I Got News for You (BBC1, Friday 9pm); The Great Model Railway Challenge (Channel 5, Friday 8pm); The Big Audition (ITV, Friday 9pm); Farther and Sun: a Dyslexic Road Trip (BBC4, Sunday 9pm); The Bank That Almost Broke Britain (BBC2, Tuesday 9pm); Sick of It (Sky1, Thursday 10pm); The Cry (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Wanderlust (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm); Press (BBC1, Thursday 9pm); No Offence (Channel 4, Thursday 9pm)