The a-Team: Series 1 [DVD]

Episode 1 & 2 - Mexican Slayride (Pilot - 2 hour)
Episode 3 - Children Of Jamestown
Episode 4 - Pros and Cons
Episode 5 - A small and Deadly War
Episode 6 - Black Day in Badrock (althought it says Black day & black rock on the case sleeve)
Episode 7 - The Rabbit That Ate Las Vegas
Episode 8 - The Out-Of-Towners
Episode 9 - Holiday in the Hills
Episode 10 - West Coast Turnaround
Episode 11 - One More Time
Episode 12 - Till Death Do Us Part
Episode 13 - The Beast from the Belly of a Boeing
Episode 14 - A Nice Place to Visit

Overall some good and some Brilliant episodes. Just a note, the episodes have NOT being digital remastered, so the sound and picture is original, having said this, I only noticed in the beginning of one of the opening sequences any distortion of sound, other than that I thought it was good quality. Cant wait For season 2 to be released, reminds me of many a happy saturday watching this at home. I'd recommend this to All A-team fans.

Having just finished enjoying the first series, I must confess to having been wrong on all counts. Firstly, whilst there is plenty of surprisingly gripping action in the series, it is unquestionably dialogue-driven. The interplay between the four leads is nothing short of wonderful: Hannibal is edgier than I remembered him, and Face more self-deprecating and less suavely confident than my memories suggested. BA could not be further removed from the two-dimensional muscle-bound lunk of my recollections, and his character is hugely appealing, with a dry wit underpinning all the 'crazy foos' and 'suckas'. His ongoing commentary throughout the series on Hannibal's 'jazz' is particularly entertaining. It is Murdoch, however, who is the unsung hero of 'The A Team'. His deranged brand of humour was clearly a massive influence on Jim Carrey, and the surrealist strain he introduces into the series is one of the reasons for its enduring appeal. You too will start singing 'garbage, ho!' every time you put the dustbin out. If you start petting an invisible dog, talking in rhyming couplets, or eating shaving foam, however, you should probably give this set a rest for a couple of weeks. Watching Mr. T corpsing at Dwight Schultz's antics is a joy; it must have been a tough job keeping that scowl set on your face with such a hilarious character actor bouncing around at your elbow.

To turn to my other observations: people do get injured in 'The A Team' (one episode begins with BA having received a potentially fatal leg wound), and in this first series at least, the episodes go to some effort to make the cobbled-together inventions BA creates seem vaguely plausible. The vehicles do have a tendency to fall to bits, too, and there is never any suggestion that they have somehow managed to craft a production-line perfect version of whatever they have attempted to fashion.

All in all, this first series of 'The A Team' is most entertaining, and may well overturn your preconceptions of the program. Either way, you'd be a 'foo' if you didn't enjoy it.