Frances Tuesday (ITV1); The Apprentice (BBC2): EX-EastEnders actress Tamzin Outhwaite's ITV debut is a drama of two halves.

"This is just the beginning," someone said at the end of last night's opening part, which seemed odd considering it had been going on for an hour-and-a-half.

This two-part series cries out to be a single 90-minute TV film, especially as the well-publicised big twist in tonight's episode is Outhwaite looking very un-Tamzin like following plastic surgery to change her appearance and avoid crooked boyfriend Lucas catching up with her.

The first episode consisted of Outhwaite looking her usual glamorous blonde self in a series of neat little suits as she did Lucas's books. You'd think all his talk of accounts in the Cayman Islands would alert her to his criminal tendencies, but no, she stands by her man as cop Lennie James tries to get her to shop him in exchange for her freedom.

None of this was particularly convincing. "I'm an accountant, I play with numbers," declared Frances last night. What else does an accountant do? More worrying was Douglas Henshall, whose accent as Lucas seemed unable to remain in one geographical location for more than two minutes.

He didn't take it well after she turned him in, telling her: "You're a dead woman." We know otherwise because Frances today is yet to come, with Outhwaite showing off the results of a couple of hours in the make-up chair.

She's very watchable and we can expect a lot more emoting once vengeful Lucas gets his hands on the child, his child, she's left behind as she embarks on her new life on the run. I just wish someone had had the sense to realise that dragging it out over two nights was not a good idea.

The Apprentice will last even longer - 14 episodes in all - as 16 of America's "best and brightest young entrepreneurs" fight for a job with tycoon Donald Trump.

He's doing this series to pass on his business knowledge to someone else, he says. It's open to question whether the best way to do this is through a game show crossed with a reality TV show in which one person is given the sack at the end of each episode. The winner gets to be president of a Trump company for a year, complete with a huge salary.

For starters, he divided the hopefuls into two teams - men and women - and made them sell lemonade on the streets of New York to see who could make the most money.

David, who had loads of paper qualifications but little aptitude for selling lemonade, was given the boot. It should have been nervous, pill-popping Sam, whose creeping up to Trump was quite outrageous. But it worked.

As a reward for winning the lemonade assignment, the women were invited up to see Trump's apartment. The place looked like a cross between a palace and a bordello, as if Laurence Llewelyn Bowen had run riot - proof that money and taste don't necessarily go together.

Published: 05/10/2004