It just
wouldn’t happen today: a kid-orientated TV show,
scheduled for tea-time Saturday on ITV, in which the
main protagonists - and intended role-models - were a
mix of gun-wielding chain-smoker, social
misfit-cum-thug, womanising egotist, and a ‘comedy’
paranoid schizophrenic (or, if you’d rather,
"crazy damn fool"). Hannibal, BA "Big
Arse" Baracus, Face and Murdoch respectively, were
The A Team, a bunch of Vietnam War veterans dedicated to
bringing down evil meat farm bosses, and corrupt local
land dealers. For money.
Fugitives
from the law, on the run from an unspecified crime they
did not commit (Cow tipping? Driving with undue care and
attention? Acting the giddy goat in a public place?),
The A Team underlined the fact that risking your life
for your country - particularly in America - was no
guarantee of respect. Brilliant!
Nobody
ever got killed or seriously wounded in The A Team,
aside from one episode in which, if we recall correctly,
"Howling Mad" Murdoch got shot (he was saved
by an emergency blood transfusion from BA, performed
using a length of guttering, a garden fork, and some
sticky-back plastic - or it might have been the other
way around). Whether this approach was more damaging
than a series in which guns are shown to blow people’s
heads off - rather than a convenient means of detonating
oil drums, and cutting through ropes at long distance -
has never been properly debated.
Generally,
though, The A Team was wholesome entertainment, packed
with all the explosions and hardware - much of it
constructed with corrugating iron and rusty bed frames
(Hannibal loved it when a plan came together, remember?)
- that kids adore. By far our favourite episode featured
an imprisioned Murdoch chanting "I want some trash
bags", until his captors had supplied him with
enough bin liners to build his own inflatable Mr T, or
something.
As
with all good shows, The A Team plummeted downhill
following the inevitable ‘change of direction’. Its
anti-establishment origins were turned on their head
when the team was offered a full pardon in return for
employment by "The Man". Funny-eyed Man From
U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughan played their new boss,
assisted by some woman in a split skirt, but it was
clear that this was a nadir from which the show would
never recover.
Throughout
its relatively short life, The A Team left us with many
enduring images, such as the trademark black and red
van, Hannibal’s unsettling penchant for leather
gloves, BA’s terrible fear of flying, and Murdoch’s
encroaching alopecia.
Nowadays,
only Murdoch is seen with any sort of regularity in
public, popping up occasionally in a recurring cameo
role in Star Trek spin-offs, his balding near complete,
while George Peppard, who played Hannibal, died a few
years back from something or other. The iconic Mr
T - aka BA Baracus - has suffered ill-health in recent
years, and turned to religion, though he followed his A
Team zenith with a degrading voice part in his own Mr T
cartoon series, throughout which he helped kids
investigate rigged basketball games and the like,
usually rounded off with some sort of tedious, to-camera
moralising ("Take it from Mr T, kids: rigging
basketball games is evil. Praise the Lord!").
Dirk Benedict - the nicely-haired Face-Man - is rumoured
to be interested in reprising his role as Starbuck in a
proposed Battlestar Galactica revival., though there’s
probably about as much chance of that happening as there
is of Automan making a comeback.
The
world has become too cynical and ironic now for another
A Team to surface. Also, the current wave of misplaced
moralising in the wake of assorted American high school
shootings, mean that the networks are steering clear of
anything which involves guns, especially if it’s aimed
at younger viewers. This is a crying shame: how else are
we going to breed a new generation of embittered,
Uzi-wielding loners?
