Series nine of The Apprentice (Tue & Wed, 9pm, BBC1) and the winds of change are howling around Lord Sugar's tasselled loafers. "Got a pile of CVs here," he grunts during the introductory smackdown, waving a miffed baronial paw over a pile of dog-eared foolscap. "Full of the usual blaahdy BS." If the assembled hopefuls were expecting a friendly welcome for their 130 per cents and their fields of ponies, they'd come to the wrong blaahdy boardroom. "I'm sick and tired of all that rubbish," continues Baron Funtimes, angrier now, as greenhorns Jaz, Myles, Jordan and co gulp and clench their bumcheeks. "All these motivational words add up to jack shit. Cos I believe that ACTIONS speak louda than words. And it's gonna be ACTIONS that I judge you on. Yeah?" Yeah. Here, then, is The Apprentice 2013: louda. Blunta. Less likely to make one want to set about one's skull with a hamma. There'll be less of that meaningless corporate whiffle-waffle, sunshine. And none of that for-thine-is-the-kingdom "life-changing job" tosh, neither. Gone are the days when winning The Apprentice meant a lifetime spent buffing Lord Sugar's paperclip collection while weeping with glee in a stationery cupboard off the A1023.

Now it's all "economic climate" this and "prepared to take a punt" that, with Sugar's £250,000 investment, we're reminded frequently, to be shared in a new business venture "50/50". So: less bombast. Less VAT-adjusted razzle-dazzle. More bollockings. And more ACTIONS. Bosh. Thankfully, there's still the likes of contestants Jason and Alex to remind us of the unparallelled joy of the abominable business twonk. "My intelligence is like a machete in the jungle," yahs PhD toff Jason. "One swipe and I'll be through!" Welshman Alex wears Milk Tray man polo necks and looks like a Freddie Mercury waxwork after a botched insurance fire. His eyebrows disgrace us all. Tar-black and violently over-threaded, they make him appear simultaneously terrified and appalled, as if he's just been insulted by a talking hole-punch. The rest pass in a blur of teeth and hubris. A man with a neck beard made of sand. Someone who high-fives the air. A woman with scared eyes who keeps screaming "BIG SMILES! SHOWTIME!" An uptalker who compares herself to Einstein. Someone who says "I take inspiration from Napoleon. I am here to conquer." Someone – Tim? Tarquin? Torvill? – whose head bobs so ferociously whenever he opens his mouth that his features are little more than a beige fog, as if his skull's got its own in-built identity-blurring app.

Tuesday's inaugural wheat/chaff-sorting task finds these captains of industry attempting to sell bog roll, ukuleles and "41 bags of premium cat litter" to central London's less discerning hardware proprietors. The ladies are pursued past boarded-up branches of JJB Sports by a yawning Nick Hewer, whose parallel career as the host of Countdown has left him openly uninterested in the antics of a group of middle-management parakeets. The gents clatter around like the Ant Hill Mob and are chased by Karren Brady, who makes observations such as "when you bring strong women together, you do get opinions", which is helpful. They all cradle their mobiles at chin-height and shout things like "THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH", as if attempting to rouse a lazy gerbil from a deep sleep. Nobody seems to know the first thing about business, or money, or social etiquette, or how to speak to a fellow human being without coming across like a clanging bellend on a clanging bellend outreach programme. Merciless editing turns the whole thing into a panto. It's the most enjoyable series opener in years. Back at the boardroom, Widow Twanky/Lord Sugar surveys this wasteland of corporate idiocy and sighs the sigh of the terminally fed-up. Who to fiyah first? "You're all a blaahdy waste of space," he says, eventually. "I've never seen such a mess". Then, naturally, he fiyahs the wrong one.