TV Critics: The Apprentice; Bankers; Great Artists in Their Own Words; Parks and Recreation

“It’s just another day at the office. We know only too well that whoever volunteers to Project Manage a task in their field of “expertise” will fail. We know that the team shown seemingly doing well and high-fiving each other throughout will lose. And we know that at some point, the candidates will find themselves tearing around London trying to buy a cheap Bolivian nose flute (or somesuch).”
Ross Jones, The Telegraph

“I’m nearly too weak with hatred to type. This week’s task is to hang, disembowel each other and sell the entrails to the highest bidder on the black market. No, not really. Just a little dream I had.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“This wasn’t exactly electrifying TV, despite the producers pulling out every trick in the sexy-business book: the 3D opening titles; the long, low tracking shots of office workers doing their best not to look at the camera; and, prompted by talk of “jollies” being used to incentivise sales staff, endless footage of go-karts symbolically going too fast.”
Ross Jones, The Telegraph

Speaking of weeping! BBC2’s three-part series on Bankers (what they did to us, what they’re still doing to us, what we should do to them) ended last night with Payback, a swift but thorough, infuriated and infuriating examination of the mis-selling of insurance products to an underinformed and trusting public.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“There’s a kind of catch embedded in the title of Great Artists in Their Own Words. It implicitly promises access to an authored revelation but the truth is – given the dynamics of the modern media – that what you usually get is an artist trying to escape the net of someone else’s words.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent

“The writing is delicious, dancing between character gags and the kind of pick-one-of-following gag strings that often result from a team of writers competing with each other.”
Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent