When it was first shown in the US, the show was a big success. "Mr. T [B.A. Baracus] was famous because of the Rocky films and the show reached number one in the ratings. It was popular everywhere, including Britian. It didn't take itself seriously and there was something in it for everyone. Surprisingly, neither the critics nor NBC. liked it, and where horrified at its success" - Dwight Schultz speaking to Richard Webber for Daily Express Saturday, 29th Apr 2006.
New Statesman (UK), 29th July 1983, Mary Harron - "They are all Vietnam veterans. The gradual assimilation of Vietnam into acceptable popular mythology, which began solemnly with The Deer Hunter, has reached its culmination with The A-Team: No longer a memory to be hurriedly brushed aside, but heroes of a network adventure show. Their enemy is a comic army officer, Col. Lynch see Sgt. Bilko, see Beetle Bailey, see M.A.S.H. whose pursuit of our heroes is doomed to slapstick failure. This is classic right-wing American populism patriotic, macho, anti-authority and is unlikely to be understood in Britain, where to be right-wing implies an obsequiousness towards officers and the status quo. But right-wing this series certainly is. The bandits, it turns out, are in league with a group of sinister guerrillas who are trying to destabilise the country. However, thanks to the A-Team's hearts and minds policy, the villagers rise up and put them to rout in a 20-minute series of comic-book battle scenes, over-turning cars and airplane stunt-tricks, in which not a single person is hurt."
The Courier-Mail/The Sunday Mail (AUS), 8th Jan 1985, Dean P. - "Despite realising what a load of codswallop it all is, I find I can watch A-Team without feeling any pain. Perhaps it is because of the bizarre Mr T, a baubled, bangled and beaded non-actor who plays a mechanical genius, omnipotent muscleman and rigidly moralistic puritan. Not even Olivier could make him believable, but without Mr T this show would be considerably weakened even with all the superb stunting, meticulously planned explosions and Schultz as the chronically eccentric Murdock. This is a performance to relish. If this show is remembered in the future for anything, it will be for giving Schultz a chance to show his skilful comedy style."
The Courier-Mail/The Sunday Mail (AUS), Oct 1985, Coomber J. - "Proving there is truly no justice on this earth, Mr T gets $40,000 an episode for merely standing around looking nasty, occasionally beating up a couple of crooks or letting off a machinegun. He also does a fair bit of growling at the supposedly insane member of the team, Murdock, who is portrayed by Dwight Schultz. Murdock is a convincing nutcase and adds some bright spots to the plot, which holds no surprises, in tonight's episode called "In Plane Sight". Perhaps Schultz really has gone insane from doing what amounts to be the same plot with only minor variations in each A-team episode. The show is made for the average 10-year-old intellect which presumably has a desire for lots of car chases, flying bullets and punch-ups."
The New York Times, 16th February 1986, John J. O'Connor - "In any event, former celebrations of violence like The A-Team, in the Top 10 not too long ago, can now be found sinking to the bottom of the ratings lists. The younger audiences who made the show are, in their familiar fickleness, deserting it. Meanwhile, the networks are rediscovering that older audiences are still big consumers who remain attractive to advertisers."
The Courier-Mail/The Sunday Mail (AUS), 27th May 1986, Dean P. - "Many people complain about the TV wasteland and probably point to The A-Team as an example of mindless, violent, primitive, exploitive sausage factory fodder. Who's arguing? It's all those (and more) except mindless. Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo have created an action farce, but sometimes the scripts are more subtle than most suspect."
The Courier-Mail/The Sunday Mail (AUS), 30th June 1987, Gibson R. - "And the penny has finally dropped. It is a farcical comedy, aimed at kids who would know no better and ones whose parents allow them to read escapist comic books. Pow, blam, zap, kerpow! You expect the words to flash across the screen as about 1000 rounds of ammunition are fired across the village. No one ducks for cover, no one hides and amazingly, no one is injured, let alone killed. Just for amusement, Mr. T goes into mufti to nail the revolutionaries while the rest of his alleged intelligence team is in jail. Some intelligence, that lot. In the slammer while their getaway boat is captured. Then when the hoedown really gets down to tin-tacks, the Beatle's song Revolution is played in its entirety while the stuntmen and there must have been dozens of them do their stuff. That's The A-Team for you folks. A merry jape."
"We were even accused of creating a drug problem in schools. Teachers, thinking it was violent, got children writing letters complaining. It was a senseless attack on an entertaining show after all, no one ever got killed" - Dwight Schultz speaking to Richard Webber for Daily Express Saturday, 29th Apr 2006.
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