Das A-Team

After the Vietnam war a ream of commandos are framed for a crime they didn't commit. While on the run from the military police they act as hired hands to help put right wrongs where the police etc have proved powerless.

Many TV shows from the 80's are looked fondly upon by those of us who were in our childhood at the time, even if they were really pretty poor – e.g. Manimal, Street Hawk etc. However many deserve their place in our hearts and I think the A Team is one such show. The basic plot is always the same – the group get involved in a mission and it always ends in some sort of gunfight and the group construct a machine out of odds and sods they find in a shed!

It contains the same elements every week, whether it be Hannibal's disguises, Murdock's bickering or the usual trickery to get BA to get on a plane. However it's all delivered with a certain amount of tongue in cheek. Why – even the title music is tongue in cheek, witness `Face" (Benedict) pause when a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica walks past him! How many other shows put the in-jokes so far to the front (Benedict having starred in that show!). This gave it a bit more freedom to be silly as it wasn't even taking itself too seriously.

Add to this a bunch of great catchphrases, running themes and of course a great title theme and you've got a hit my friends. It's hard to imagine anyone else playing their roles. Peppard will always be Hannibal to me ,no matter how many times I see earlier films. Likewise with Benedict and Schultz. Mr T is famous in his own right but I'll always mistakenly call him BA – to me that's who he is! The basic 4 always had good interaction and worked very well together. The support cast throws up the odd name – LQ Jones, Tia Carrera, Divoff, Hulk hogan, David McCallum, Boy George – but really the supporting cast didn't matter when the leads were on form.

Overall this may have been silly but it was great fun. All these years later and I'm approaching my thirties and I still enjoy it when I find it on a rerun somewhere. Somethings are just fun no matter what!

Some '80s shows that were hits at the time really don't hold up well today, but some very definitely do. "Moonlighting" was one of them, and so was this creation of Frank Lupo and Stephen J. Cannell. (Lupo later came to a parting of the ways with Cannell and inflicted "Werewolf" and "Something Is Out There" on the world. Blub.)

Like most of the people commenting on "The A-Team," I used to watch it as a kid (well, a teenager really). It had likeable heroes, comedy, action, top music (unlike most TV producers, Cannell billed Mike Post and Pete Carpenter in the main titles with the stars) ... the lot. The plots weren't exactly loaded with endless twists, but that was part of the fun - who else looked forward to the week's DIY montage where the quartet built that week's weapons? (As Hannibal pointed out in one of the novelisations, it's amazing how the bad guys always locked them up with precisely what they needed to escape.)

And contrary to popular belief, our heroes did get hurt from time to time (the clip show episode "Curtain Call" used Murdock being shot as an excuse for his comrades to hold a remembrance of episodes past; in "The Battle Of Bel Air" the helicopter containing the A-Team crashed at the end of the climax, injuring everyone EXCEPT B.A. Baracus); occasionally episodes started with someone actually getting murdered (the man in the exploding car in "Skins," one of the battling convicts in "Pros & Cons"). The show didn't dwell on it, true, but it was there.

This remains Cannell's most successful show as an independent producer, and demonstrates how he's more adaptable than the more critically acceptable Steven Bochco (this is not to put down Bochco, but can you imagine the man with the would-be violinist for a dad coming up with shows as wildly different as "The Greatest American Hero," "Top of the Hill" and "Wiseguy"?). It was fun in the 1980s, and it's fun now. Which is a lot more than can be said for "The Professionals."

The A-Team was one of three shows - the others being The Cosby Show and Miami Vice - that rescued NBC in the 1980s, and this mixture of action and comedy still holds up as an entertaining concoction.

The show succeeds primarily on the personalities of the cast. George Peppard's career was drying up and looked half past dead when he was cast as flamboyant Colonel John H. "Hannibal" Smith; his performances gave his career the boost it otherwise would not have gotten as in the manner of Leslie Nielsen he found his niche in comedic flamboyance after nearly two decades as a straight lead or in a character role.

Dirk Benedict brings Starbuck to Earth (best shown in the show's most overt and best in-joke, the shot of a Cylon centurion guide at Universal Studios walking past Templeton Peck with the intimidating hum of its eye scanner added to the soundtrack) and scores again as the slightly decedent but ultimately sympathetic rogue who is the team's primary scam expert. Peck is something of the dry-witted observor of the crazy happenings to the team during its adventures.

Mr. T had become a household name in Rocky III but it was The A-Team that cemented his persona with his trademark "Shut up, fool!" and general attitude with a heart of gold. Bosco Arnold Baracus was always feuding with the team's pilot, Hector M. Murdoch, committed to a VA psycho ward due to insanity concocted in the Vietnam war - insanity that is just a ruse for Murdoch to better help the team.

It may seem odd to think of Dwight Schultz as a qualified Broadway performer, but his career has been in that vein, and his role of Murdoch made him a true TV star; Schultz gave Murdoch his personality but he also tempered him with believeable torment, best shown in the show's warmest episode "Bounty," co-starring Schultz' reallife wife Wendy Fulton. Murdoch can be funny, but as Wendy helps bring out in this episode, Schultz is also a qualified dramatic performer.

Ultimately fleshing out the show was the Gerard-esque pursuer of the team, Colonel Roderick Decker. Lance LeGault portrayed Decker and made one of TV's best recurring villians. Decker gained sympathy from his determination and it showed in one of the show's weaker episodes, "Incident At Crystal Lake" where he and his executive officer Captain Crane are attacked by four criminals and brutally beaten; no pleasure is derived from seeing Decker and Crane brutalized; if anything the viewer despises this scene precisely because the two Army officers are so humiliated. This sympathy angle is best shown in the show's flashback episode "Curtain Call" where Decker has the team cornered and they offer no resistance to arrest and also in a later episode where Hannibal needs to protect the family of his client from mobsters, and the only way he can is to draw Decker into the fray.

As Crane, future director Carl Franklin displays superb chemistry with LeGault throughout the run of the show, and it was a mystery when, after two episodes of the show's 1985-6 season, Crane was curiously dropped.

This is a show where everything revolves around personality. The plots and production values are deliberately on a budget; it is the personality of the characters that drives the show and makes it work. Hannibal always loves it when a plan comes together, B.A. is always cantankerous and terrified of flying (except, curiously, in one 1986 episode where Peck is rescued and they fly out in a helicopter), Templeton Peck always has a scam running, and Murdoch is always engagingly nuts.

And it all works, each episode, of a pivotal action comedy series of the 1980s.

Weren't 80's shows the greatest? There are some great shows out there today but nothing like The Dukes of Hazard, The Incredible Hulk and The A-Team. What an absolutely fantastic idea to have four Vietnam Vets on the run from the law and along the way solving crimes and puzzles for people that can afford them. How many of us can remember the bickering of B.A and Murdock? Remember how funny it was to watch Hannibal and Murdock trick B.A into drinking his milk? All of this was done to knock him out so they could fly somewhere (B.A. was afraid of flying). Hannibal smoking his cigars and then spewing out cool lines like " I love it when a plan comes together. " Faceman could infiltrate any establishment, not through brute force but with his wit and ability to disguise himself. And Murdock was just plain crazy, or was he? Many people have alluded to the fact no one ever got hurt either. How many times did Hannibal shoot out someone's tires and the car would flip over 500 times and then the occupants would get out of the car just rubbing their neck and grimacing a bit? Classic stuff. I also think the A-Team was a distant cousin of MacGyver because they could build anything out of anything. They would be locked in a warehouse by the bad guys and that warehouse would just happen to have a blow-torch and a bunch of steel in it. Low and behold, they would build themselves a tank. Sure this is all incredibly silly but so entertaining.

Some 90's shows are great. Friends and Cheers and Frasier and I'm sure a bunch of others are awesome, but they can not match the sheer innocence and brilliance of shows like the A-Team. Maybe I am biased because I grew up in the 80's but I truly feel that way. The A-Team is one show that I wish would show up in syndication here in Toronto. It was fun, imaginative and damn entertaining. Just like most other entertainment that was born in the 80's.

A true staple of the 80's

10 out of 10

I remember watching this when it first was aired in the UK, it was on a Friday night and I was about 12 years old.

After watching it I knew it was a show that I would watch every week, this was certainly different from any other action show I had seen before.

Here were 4 guys who were on the run from the government but helped people out with problems they had, they were different types of guys but put them together and they made The A Team.

Hannibal who always had a plan, they didn't always come out the way he planned but they worked.

Face was the guy who could get anything from anywhere and always scammed hotels, planes etc for the team.

B.A was the muscle and the mechanic in the team who could build and fix anything, Murdock was the insane pilot who was always broken out of the V A hospital when the team needed him.

There was also Amy and Tania who were reporters who separately attached themselves to the team for a while, although rumours were that George Peppard who played Hannibal was not happy with the female involvement in the show.

Also there was the MP Colonel's who tried to catch the A team , first there was Lynch and then Decker who was played by Lancs Le Gault and the character of Decker was the one who pursued the team the most.

People do pick holes in the show like why did the team never shoot anyone and they always got locked up in a garage or warehouse where they would be able to build something to make their escape.

But you can pick holes in any fictional show, this was action packed family entertainment.