[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Big-Deal-Steph-McGovern.jpeg?w=910″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe art market is a tough place to survive these days, with even megagalleries like Gagosian and Pace shuttering locations and cutting loose artists, and every day seeming to bring news of another art gallery calling it quits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSo maybe, counterintuitively, this is the perfect moment for the BBC <\/em>to launch a new reality show that aims to incubate the next great art-dealing duo. The Big Deal with Steph McGovern<\/em>, which debuts this week, sees \u201cseven pairs of aspiring art dealers battle it out for the chance to win \u00a350,000 [about $67,500] worth of British art.\u201d The series aims to \u201cpull back the curtain\u201d on the art market, says BBC Arts head Suzy Klein, offering \u201ca fresh insight into how art is discovered, bought, and sold.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tReality television has in the past tried to capture what makes for great artists and, despite signing on high-wattage experts, has failed spectacularly.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDealer Jeffrey Deitch tried first, with Artstar<\/em>, on the Gallery HD network, as early as 2005, with guests including curator Debra Singer, critic Carlo McCormick, and performance art guru RoseLee Goldberg. Writing for Slate<\/em>, Dushko Petrovich called Deitch \u201cmostly charmless\u201d and said the show felt like \u201can upscale infomercial\u201d for the dealer himself. Bravo premiered Work of Art: The Next Great Artist <\/em>in 2010, with judges including dealers Jeanne Greenberg and Bill Powers and critic Jerry Saltz. In The Stranger<\/em>, Jen Graves wrote, \u201cthe show was horrible. Really, truly awful.\u201d MTV followed up in 2023 with the nearly identically titled The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist<\/em>, which featured insiders like then\u2013Hirshhorn Museum director Melissa Chiu and writer Sarah Thornton. Annie Irish wrote for ARTnews<\/em> that the show \u201cfalls flat on its face.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCan aspiring art dealers also make for terrible television?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMcGovern is a journalist and TV presenter who has worked on financial news and business news programs and whose father is an artist, Eamonn McGovern. \u201cIt\u2019s like The Apprentice<\/em> for the art world,\u201d she says in press materials, \u201cbut the deals are all real, and it\u2019s as much about the hustle as it is about art.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA stranger aspiration could hardly be dreamed of for The Big Deal<\/em>. The Apprentice <\/em>was, of course, the long-running reality show hosted for 14 seasons by then\u2013New York real estate developer and now second-term US president (and convicted fraudster and adjudicated sexual assaulter) Donald Trump, which introduced his tagline, \u201cYou\u2019re fired!\u201d The show is notorious, in retrospect, for promoting a vision of Trump, who even failed to run a profitable casino, as a successful businessman, the identity on which he ran for president.<\/p>\n \n\tPitching in as the series mentor, coaching the aspiring dealers, is Cordelia de Freitas, director since 2021 of the Aqua Art Miami fair, who has over the course of her career also worked at several art galleries. Asked about the one artwork she would own if money were no object, she cites Paolo Uccello\u2019s painting The Battle of San Romano<\/em> (ca. 1435\u20131440), from the Uffizi, which she compares to \u201csomething out of the Simpsons<\/em>\u201d because \u201cthe horses just look so wrong.\u201d But, she says, \u201cGod loves a trier.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEach episode will welcome a special guest expert. Among them are Matt Carey-Williams, who has worked for all three major auction houses; Margo McDaid, an artist who runs a gallery in Margate; and Ani Petrov, VP Marketing and Data Analytics at digital marketplace Artsy.<\/p>\n \n\tThe teams include Darren and Charles, a pair of London friends with a \u201cgo getter\u201d attitude; Ollie and Bella, siblings who hope their \u201cstrong family connection\u201d will help them grab the brass ring; Gavin and Liam from Belfast, who are into graffiti; and Phil and Ellie, a father and daughter who \u201care hopeful a mixture of youth and experience will be a winning formula.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEpisode 1 premieres on BBC Northern Ireland on August 12 and BBC Two and iPlayer on August 13.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/bbc-reality-tv-show-aspiring-art-dealers-the-apprentice-1234794731\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Big-Deal-Steph-McGovern.jpeg?w=910″] The art market is a tough place to survive these days, with even megagalleries like Gagosian and Pace shuttering locations and cutting loose artists, and every day seeming to bring news of another art gallery calling it quits.\u00a0 So maybe, counterintuitively, this is the perfect moment for the BBC to launch a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2088855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2088855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2088855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2088855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2088855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}