PROBLEM SOLVING
TOM EATON: None but ourselves can right the wrongs
If you have a problem, if no-one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire … the A-Team
If you have a problem, if no-one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire … the A-Team!" If you were a child in the 1980s, you know what happens next: a burst of gunfire, the first iconic notes of that iconic theme — da da-da daaaaa! — and then an opening montage of Jeeps flying off roads in Guatemala-slash-California and all the other nonsense that made The A-Team such B-grade fun. If you weren’t a child in the 1980s, let me catch you up. The show’s formula was simple. Helpless innocents are being harassed by heavies: as per the opening monologue, they have a problem and no-one else can help. They appeal to the A-Team for help, and then follows a sort of Mad Max version of The Twelve Days of Christmas: five exploding cars, four fist-fights, three disguises, two gun battles, and a drugged BA Baracus flown to safety. In the end, however, it always just boiled down to lots of shooting. In the 1980s there was no problem that couldn’t be solved by expending huge amount...
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