BUSHELL ON THE BOX
June 10. The BBC will put Doctor Who out to competitive tender this year. Which means Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf will be rapidly disappearing into the Void. This story will be spun by both sides, but odds on the Beeb have finally seen sense and realised Russell T’s right-on rhubarb was ruining the franchise, and was the reason why Disney walked away. Just over a year ago, I wrote: ‘Have hostile aliens infiltrated Doctor Who? The show’s baffling commitment to all manner of wokery has done for its ratings what the Weeping Angels did for nocturnal graveyard gatherings. Viewing figures plunged to a feeble 1.53 million last month – less than half of the audience it was attracting when the BBC axed it in 1989. It’s not science fiction in any grown-up sense, more a space pantomime for children that comes over-loaded with ham-fisted student politics. In recent years they have box-ticked eco-doom, the Iraq war, trans issues, American racism (twice) and evil corporations (multiple times) but we’ll never see an allegory about the perils of Communism, or China's persecution of the Uyghurs or bogus Sontaran asylum seekers infiltrating future Earth… Last weekend they hit peak camp with Ncuti Gatwa’s disco-dancing Doc at the “Interstellar Song Contest”. This 2925 version of Eurovision, with finalists from 40 planets, included references to Brighton pride, a holographic Graham Norton, an abundance of blokes calling each other “babe” and “darling”, “the immortal Rylan” and a woman dubbing herself she/her. Do sod/off. The gist was ‘Eurovision meets Die Hard’. They had the requisite rotten songs (Dugga Doo? FFS! Dugga Don’t!) but where were the singing Cybermen and Dancing Daleks? Where were the warbling goblins? And why had music barely changed in centuries? They didn’t bother with tech innovation. Star Wars predicted 3D holograms, Star Trek foresaw medical tricorders and virtual reality (the Holodeck) – but who needs forward-thinking when you can have the Doc flying through space propelled by an anachronistic confetti cannon? “Camp!” he cried gleefully. Fabulous or fatuous – you decide. The action hero exploits were lamer than Limpy the Viking. Two horned Hellion terrorists hijacked the event with a plan to kill three trillion viewers in revenge for the corporate exploitation of their planet (or something). The Doc had a personality change, becoming spitefully vicious and brutalising the chief creep Kid (Freddie Fox). He also had flashbacks of his granddaughter Susan – unseen since 1983 and still played by Carole Ann Ford. A joy for Whovians, yes, but why hadn’t she crossed his mind before? After his rage subsided, Hellion Cora’s emotional ballad won over the watching trillions, and Anita Dobson’s mysterious Mrs Flood was outed as a Time Lady who “bi-generated” into two halves of The Rani (Kate O’Mara’s renegade boffin, now played by Archie Panjabi). Disney’s dosh makes it look terrific, but are they happy with children being bombarded with cack-handed propaganda? Are parents? Are teenagers? They’re not all “progressive”. The show needs fresh thinking, better plots, and more imagination, not this right-on ‘issue of the week’ tedium. Obsessive virtue-signalling is one of the main reasons Dr Who no longer flies, along with sloppy scripts and a hugely annoying soundtrack.’
Jan 30 2026. The Apprentice returned with a strange promo campaign – ‘the hustle is on’, ‘hustlers gonna hustle’, ‘hustlers gonna rise’ etc. Had BBC1 forgotten that hustlers are con artists who specialise in long cons? I know that because Hustle ran for eight series on, um, BBC1… Either they meant hagglers or they were just admitting that this clapped-out reality format is one long con-trick. It’s all fake! The opening credits show the Shard, the Gherkin and formerly Canary Wharf when the show is shot in North Acton and Lord Sugar’s real boardroom is in Loughton, Essex. But the biggest fib is the idea that the 20 candidates – including an estate agent, a dancer, some woman from Geordie Shore and a midwife with a letting agency – are “Britain’s entrepreneurial elite” when they’re just the usual mix of deluded big-headed berks and Love Island lookalikes. One puffed-up buffoon boasted he’d made his first million by the age of 25, failing to grasp the difference between turnover and profit. Besides the tasks have nothing to do with business acumen. They opened with the usual ‘send the twerps abroad to buy nine items they’d never heard of’ ruse. In reality, you would just google “a golden pineapple” or slip a hard-up local student a few bob to take you to the right place to buy shrimp paste etc. It’s not a business challenge; it’s a badly organised shopping trip.
This was a pricey opener for the show’s 20th series. The Beeb channelled Race Around The World to export the teams to Hong Kong (at our expense) when they could have failed equally spectacularly in Aberystwyth for a fraction of the cost. “I don’t think you could find a sofa in DFS,” snorted the grumpy old lord. Probably true, some of them look like they’d struggle to find their own backsides in a coal mine. Soon they will inevitably face a pointless cooking challenge, as if that were any guide to entrepreneurial ability. Imagine, “We like your ideas for Tesla and SpaceX, Mr Musk, but your Black Forest gateau was baked to death – you’re fired.” The girls got hopelessly lost. And, at one point, sub-team leader Georgina Newton burst into an improvised promotional song on the spot for a local business: “Glocal Mahjong is where it all began”. It was understandably awful, but poor, doomed Georgina was right in one respect. The only business The Apprentice involves these days is showbusiness.
The format creaks like Sugar’s jokes. Could it be saved? Possibly. But not by hiring pretty wannabes or Z-list celebrities. Why not hire real hagglers instead? Del-Boy-style market traders, Lovejoy-style antique dealers, car salesmen, band managers and talent agents? And set them real challenges instead of daft sub-Generation Game larks like make-an-amateur-DIY-promo-film against the clock. Then the sparks might fly again.
PS. The new stripped-down, sub-Traitors, podcast-style BBC2 after-show is awful. Get rid! And as for the bloke who boasted, “My first car was a Tesla, my second a Porsche”, let’s hope his next ride is in the show’s black cab of failure.