Design for life

In an effort to find a new generation of British design talent, Philippe Starck, one of the world's best-known product designers, invites 12 hopefuls to a school of design he has set up in Paris. Over coming weeks, he will whittle them down until one fortunate student wins the opportunity of a lifetime - to work alongside the master for six months at his agency in the French capital. Ranging from unemployed retail worker Jess to college lecturer Ilsa, the students meet Starck for the first time and discover what a larger-than-life character he is. And they face their first challenge - to head to a local hypermarket and find examples of good and bad design. When they explain their thinking to Starck, he critiques them and selects the weakest five for a further nerve-wracking test. When it's over, the group of 12 is now 10 and the school of design can begin in earnest. (R)

The 10 surviving students are set their first design challenge by Starck. Cocksure North London boy Nebil Avas is confident that he can pull off something to delight the master of design. Whilst the rest of the students seek inspiration from all over Paris to come up with a design, Nebil employs a 'free-thinking' method relying purely on his own imagination. As the pending deadline looms, tensions rise among the students and the night before the presentations to Starck, there's an argument after Nebil announces that he has no competitors in the house. When D-Day arrives Starck is presented with 10 very different interpretations of his brief - but he's less than impressed and tells the students they've been a little lazy. He eliminates three of them, but in a shock turn of events, concedes to send only two home, after some of the students step in to save a friend. (R)

Design students compete for a six-month placement at Philippe Starck's design agency. Mike is desperately worried. After being thrown out last week and then saved in a rebellion by fellow students Ana and Ilsa, he knows he must now excel if he's to show he deserves his reprieve. But Mike's difficulties don't end there. Starck interrupts the students research for their next brief to send them to a circus. Starck considers selling an idea to be almost as important as the idea itself. He feels the students lack presentation skills and thinks making them perform on stage as clowns will help address this. But even as the students grapple with the fact they'll be judged on their presentation as much as their idea, they discover that with just 24hrs to go they've all seriously misunderstood Starck's brief. They have failed to turn their ideas and concepts into an actual product. This time it's not just Mike who panics: they all do. (R)

Design students compete for a six-month placement at Philippe Starck's design agency. The eight remaining students are disgraced. After the previous week's failure to interpret the brief correctly, Starck wanted to eliminate them all - instead he is making them repeat the brief again. Failure to reach his exacting standards will result in blood on the studio walls. Despondent and fed up, the students struggle yet again to grasp just what Starck is after but they come back with a renewed determination to prove to Starck that they are truly great designers. Polly Firth hopes to regain her status as top of the class but she finds herself more and more on the periphery of the group, which culminates in a confrontation when Ana and Ilsa accuse her of breaking the rules and getting outside help with her design. When the students finally pitch their ideas to Starck, he is ruthless and sends four of the eight students home, their dreams of working with one of the greatest designers in the world shattered.

Design students compete for a six-month placement at Philippe Starck's design agency. In the previous episode there were eight students, now only four remain. As those left set out to meet Starck's model maker, the man who will finally turn their ideas into reality, the students must put the legacy of the previous week's cull behind them. While friendships have been broken, their chance of winning the opportunity to work with one of the world's greatest designers is now twice as good. But the man who has transformed Starck's ideas into working models for the past twenty years is a hard man to please. None of the students escape his critical eye, but in particular he destroys the central mechanism for Trevor's idea, before telling Ilsa she must start again. He gives the students 48 hours to make all the necessary changes or risk losing the opportunity of working with him.

Design students compete for a six-month placement at Philippe Starck's design agency. It is the grand final. Only Ilsa and Mike remain from the original 12 students - and soon one of them will win the coveted opportunity of a work placement alongside Starck at his Paris design agency. Mike and Ilsa have two weeks to finalise their products and come up with a poster advertising campaign for them. After her debacle with the branding challenge in the previous week, Ilsa struggles at the ad agency and is soon hamstrung by her old problem of over-complicating everything. Mike, meanwhile, is still smarting from Starck's criticisms of his work - that it lacked soul and spirit. As the clock ticks towards D-Day the pair work more and more frenetically, reducing Ilsa to tears and Mike to exhaustion. But when it is finally time to present their finished prototypes to Starck, the biggest surprises are yet to come.