by Tim Webb

Created on: December 12, 2010   Last Updated: December 13, 2010

It was the highlight of Saturday teatime on ITV, The A Team, a show that an average teenager or child was easily the highlight of the weekend. From the action packed opening titles that introduced all the main characters to the end of the hour when the lead character would always get the last word. It was a rather inoffensive show by today’s standards and throughout the shows five year run from 1983 to 1987 the show has the remarkable figure of just five in body count and usually after a major car crash happened on screen everyone would get out unscathed such was the way the

story was told, it was more Tom and Jerry than Rambo. The premise was simple, the A Team were all soldiers in the American army, they were sentenced by the Military for a crime they didn’t commit, they escaped and now are hired mercenaries. This was really the thread for every episode, yet in the latter seasons the Military caught up with them which changed things and The A Team then worked for the American government on selected missions.

There had been rumours running round the Internet for ages that there was a new film in the works. The need for a film of the show should have really been released years ago, however the writers needed to update the back story from the eighties. Vietnam was the original place the A Team resided, this time round the team are in Iraq. This had to be an origin story, this is something that was a given in the story and in the Smith. This is done at high speed as the emphasis is to rescue Face from Mexican renegades, and all four characters are introduced in turn to the audience. The whole sequence ends up with the team in a “borrowed” medical helicopter flight to the American border where they are chased by the renegades and the inevitable line “I love it when a plan comes together”. From here they are a defined team working for the American government that is until they accept a mission to recover stolen plates that prevent counterfeit money being printed.

There is a lot of respect paid to the original film, in fact hearing the theme tune just sent a shiver down my spine. The updating and inclusion of gadgets such as laptops and mobile phones enhance the feel of the story and give a nice freshness to the way that tension and suspense are created. Of course the new cast had to be something special and getting Liam Neeson bought in to play Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith was a coup of the highest levels.

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