When Dragons’ Den met The Apprentice via Obama
Anyone familiar with business jargon – should we just circle back and unpack that, and reach out to find something impactful? – can decipher Channel 4’s description of The Money Maker. “This dramatic format reinvents the business makeover space in a compelling way,” the broadcaster said. Translation: it’s Dragons’ Den with a sprinkle of The Apprentice.
The dragon in question is Eric Collins, an Alabama-born venture capitalist looking to invest in British businesses. We’re told he’s risking his own money. In this first episode he descended on Jasen Jackiw, who runs a firm in Greater Manchester carrying out invisible repairs for property companies, housing associations and the like. This was an interesting thing in itself: who knew there were people out there whose job it is to repaint an inch of damaged marble worktop in a rental home, or to restore a chipped cabinet in a newbuild property?
Anyway, back to Eric. He knows Barack Obama. He is very smooth. He is softly-spoken to the point where he could get a job narrating one of those sleep apps. Jasen read out a description of Eric: “He is a deadly combination of easy-going charm and forensic business knowledge,” and it wasn’t clear if that was written by the production company or Eric’s personal PR.
Eric and Jasen weren’t natural bedfellows, what with Jasen calling his headquarters JFDI House (Just F-----g Do It). Nor were Jasen and his business partner, Steven Monaghan, falling at Eric’s feet – they turned down an offer of £100,000 in return for 40 per cent of the company. Eric’s charm gave way to something more hard-headed. But they couldn’t have a programme that stopped there, so instead Eric offered to give them what I assume was sound advice on how to make the company more profitable, and then returned with a better offer three months later.
There followed The Apprentice bit, where Jasen and Steven had to pitch to various companies. “Jasen’s pitching style is all about Northern charm. That’s not going to work with my contacts,” said Eric, which was a bit rude. There was also a cameo from Charlie Mullins, the coiffed head of Pimlico Plumbers.
But there was a happy ending: Eric upped his offer, Jasen accepted. Along the way, we heard how tough Jasen’s journey had been, and how hard he had worked. He hired some trainees, all bright kids who were desperate for work. The social enterprise side of things sets this apart from other shows of this ilk. You could do nothing at the end but wish them the best of luck.
Appearances can be deceptive. The Violence Paradox was a lengthy documentary on BBC Four, testing the hypothesis that we are living through the least violent period in history. It was packed with academics presenting their research, interspersed with nothing fancier than some stylised animation (not those terrible historical reconstructions). In short: what the BBC should be making as part of it’s remit to educate.
But the American voice-over gave it away. This was a two-year-old film first aired on PBS, the US Public broadcaster. There it was part of the Nova science strand, which was created in 1974 by Michael Ambrosino who was inspired – here’s the kicker – by BBC Two’s Horizon. BBC Four, launched as the home of serious documentaries, now makes almost nothing of its own and instead shows American documentaries inspired by what the BBC used to stand for. Things have come to a pretty pass.
The two-parter covered a fascinating subject. It was based on Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Pinker, a Pollyanna-ish Harvard psychologist, appeared with academics (pleasingly, some British) from US universities.
Various theories were put forward as to why violence has decreased: a fall in testosterone levels; the establishment of governments to keep populations in line; and the development of the novel, encouraging empathy with others. These were used to explain why we no longer think that burning people at the stake is acceptable.
The first episode provided food for thought. We learned that even babies have empathy, rejecting a toy that they had seen behaving meanly in a puppet show. The second episode was much weaker, featuring an experiment in which Christians and Muslims found common ground by playing in the same football team. I doubt that’s going to solve many crises in the Middle East.
Experts warned that humanity “can go backwards easily” and complicity in something like the Holocaust “is not a question of personality, but a question of situation”. They were a useful counterweight to the optimistic stuff, which felt a little too American.
The Money Maker ★★★ The Violence Paradox ★★★