in General

Bring Back The A-Team. Contrived, or genius?

After Channel 4’s latest series of the freak-show Big Brother hit our TV screen, they had Bring Back the A-Team, Justin Lee Collins had a show dedicated to track down and find the remaining members of the A-Team and bring them back together for what would be an emotional reunion.

The show was very good an enjoyable. Certainly Justin Lee Collins’ comic “puppy dog” style seemed geniune enough, but was the show? I mean, just how hard could it really be to track down the A-Team, I mean it’s not like he’s stalking Chunk from the Goonies.

I mean, couldn’t he just call up their collective agents and offered them huge money to rejoin? I mean, we all know that T likes money.

Lee Collins also spent a lot of time asking about George Peppard, the actor who played John “Hannibal” Smith to find out if the rumours about him being a “jerk” were true. Of course he couldn’t ask Peppard himself as he sadly passed away many years ago, the least Collins could do was to ask a “psychic” to ask the “ghost” of Peppard if he hated the T as much as Collins thought he did.

Anyway, the show did seem awfully long and I just don’t think the whole running up to the limo, knocking on the window and asking “can i aaaaave foive minutes of yer time please?” whilst endlessly repeating moronic catchphrases after every staged “ambush” such as “Good Times!” “Rock and Roll !” whatever next…”Happy Days”?

Collins each actor, except T, if they’d like to do a reunion — why he didn’t ask T on air about the reunion could be about the money. I mean, he’s not gonna do it for free. It gave me the impression that T didn’t care much about the other members.

The remaining cast members did rejoin in a bar. Faceman, Murdoch and the rest sure looked very old. Faceman famousily recovered from cancer of the prostate and refused the usual treatment and moved away to a secluded cottage where he followed the rules of a macrobiotic diet to cure himself of the cancer. T too also contracted cancer, but fortuently recovered.

The show was a great reminder of all our childhoods, and a great trip down the alley of nostalgia. It’s a shame that Collins’ didn’t answer some of the unanswered questions about the A-Team, but it was a very good, albeit obviously staged, show.

Also, I think at the end he should have said “Well I’ve done my job, I’ve brought back the A-Team.” then he should have paused, looked at the cast, perhaps thanked them on behalf of all of us for the memories and then said “Okay, let’s leave them be” and then walked away with the camera still there for a few minutes as they chatted away reminiscing about old times.