I love it when a TV plan comes together

I’m not especially current when it comes to TV viewing habits. (Actually, I’m probably not terribly current when it comes to very much, but anyway…) When I see people raving on social media about the latest great show on Netflix, I make a mental note to consider watching it in a couple of years’ time, once I’ve finally got round to watching the latest series of Vera.

Ever since we’ve had access to more than four TV channels, I have struggled to keep up. Partly it’s a lack of time, allied to a peculiar sense that I don’t want to risk the time I do have in front of the box watching something that might or might not be good.

Ironically, the consequence of that is I often find myself hankering for comfort telly: re-watching things I loved in the past, that won’t take very much brain power to understand (Friends, House, Parks & Recreation); or finally alighting on something that everyone has been telling me about for half a decade and then bingeing 10 series of it (Taskmaster).

This tendency reached something of a zenith last Thursday. I had spent the early part of the week burning the midnight oil and worrying about a work event I was involved in organising.

Thankfully, the conference proved to be a success, and when it finished just before lunch on Thursday I felt a moment of euphoria, followed immediately by that sense of complete exhaustion that can hit you when a built-up of anxiety can finally be released.

As the event was a remote one, I was working at home. Usually, I would eat my lunch in the kitchen, laptop close by. But I had a sudden urge for some cosy telly and some comfort food. Armed with a packet of Doritos, I flicked on the TV, hesitating over the welter of choice. And then, a moment of inspiration: The A-Team.

No show is quite so redolent of my childhood. From the age of seven until about 12, I sat through heaven knows how many episodes of Blockbusters, waiting desperately for Hannibal Smith and co to make their arrival onto the screen. I marvelled at their ingenuity and good humour; when me and my brother weren’t watching, we played at being the A-Team.

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From the opening monologue (“In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit…”) and the brilliant 1980s-charged theme tune to the guns and the humour, The A-Team had everything my child self wanted. When I sat down to watch it on Thursday, I was transported back 30-odd years in an instant.

Even when it first aired, the show wasn’t without its critics. For a show watched predominantly by children, it is relentlessly violent – although nobody ever gets seriously hurt, even when they have been strafed by machine-gun fire or their jeep has flipped over after driving into a small shrub.

By modern standards, there is a lot that is troubling about The A-Team. Violence aside, there is the casual misogyny that so often characterises programmes of the era; and the kind of racism that sees Hannibal impersonate an elderly Chinese man by putting on a false moustache and a cod accent, and the endless stereotyping of Mexicans in particular.

If some of that is wince-inducing, and while some of the stunt editing is occasionally on the shaky side, it still makes for a compelling nostalgia-fest. There is also at its heart both a clear morality tale – baddies get their comeuppance; bullies don’t prosper – and a surprising degree of nuance.

The A-Team are, after all, men on the run from the authorities, men of action, scarred by conflict. The violence may be cartoonish but the Vietnam War backstory provides a surprisingly complex underlying framework.

All in all, it’s a show for the ages – or at least, for a middle-aged man too knackered to think and wanting a dose of departed youth. So, if you want to veg, and if can find it on your telly, maybe you should watch, The A-Team.