The Apprentice UK

The Apprentice is a British business-styled reality game show, created by Mark Burnett, distributed by Fremantle and broadcast by the BBC. Based upon the American original of the same name and billed as the "job interview from hell", the programme focuses on a group of aspiring businesspeople competing against each other in a series of business related challenges, in order to win a prize offered by British business magnate Alan Sugar. Produced by a number of companies over the course of the show's history, including Talkback Thames and United Artists Media Group, each series consists of around twelve episodes, and were initially aired either around early/late Spring, before later series began their broadcasts around Autumn. The show initially was aired on BBC Two, before the programme's success led the BBC to move the show to BBC One from the start of the third series in 2007.Since its second series, the show is accompanied by a companion discussion show entitled The Apprentice: You're Fired! that runs alongside a series' broadcast. In addition, the programme has also spawned two celebrity versions for Comic Relief and Sport Relief, and a number of special 60-minute episodes, concentrating on the candidates that were fired in the current series being broadcast or those who made it to its penultimate/final stage. While the programme has been compared to another BBC series, Dragons' Den, its success has led to the creation of Apprentice-related merchandising including a magazine, podcast, and official books, while leading other production companies to produces shows that follow a similar format, including Tycoon, Beat the Boss, and Election. At present, the show has run for fourteen series and a total of 169 episodes. On 14 November 2018, Lord Sugar confirmed that a fifteenth series was under production, to be aired in 2019.