NBC's Classic 5-Part Action Thriller Breaks All The Rules Of Storytelling

Published Sep 26, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock. With antiheroes like Tony Soprano, blockbuster spectacles like Band of Brothers, and self-aware single-camera sitcoms like 30 Rock, the Golden Age of Television broke all the rules of the stiffest, stuffiest, most formulaic medium for storytelling. The Golden Age upended all the rote traditions; The Wire eschewed the time-tested case-of-the-week cop show format and replaced it with a more nuanced, realistic portrayal of police procedures. But some shows were subverting all this stuff before the Golden Age. Hill Street Blues explored the messy personal lives of detectives long before The Wire came along. The Prisoner had cinematic visuals and lavish set designs long before Twin Peaks and Lost and Band of Brothers came along. The Twilight Zone was doing social commentary through horror long before The Walking Dead and The Last of Us came along with their ravenous hordes of allegorical zombies. Star Trek was doing social commentary through spacefaring science fiction long before Battlestar Galactica came along with its interstellar metaphor for the War on Terror. The A-Team might not be the first title that comes to mind when you think of prestige television. But this cheesy old-school action-adventure was actually a lot more subversive and groundbreaking than it might look. The A-Team Deliberately Breaks All The Rules Of Storytelling Via MovieStillsDB At a time when sitcoms and soap operas alike adhered slavishly to the conventions of dramatic storytelling, The A-Team rejected character arcs and plot development in favor of a halfway house between zero-consequence, catchphrase-laden cartoon violence and raw live-action dynamics. It shouldn’t work — on paper, it sounds absolutely absurd, and in execution, it’s absolutely absurd — but, somehow, it works. Around the time the 20th Century Fox movie adaptation was coming to theaters, A-Team creator Stephen J. Cannell — one of the most prolific TV creators of the 1980s — sat down for an interview with GQ. According to Cannell, his only mandate from the network was to “break all the rules.” Brandon Tartikoff, the president of NBC at the time, came to Cannell in desperate need of a script. He needed something they could shoot within two weeks, and the only prompt he gave them was to write a Road Warrior-style action thriller. He told them they could put Belker from Hill Street Blues in the show, and that Mr. T from Rocky III would play the driver. Cannell had always wanted to make a TV show about soldiers of fortune, so he came up with this idea of a team of Vietnam veterans riding around in a van, solving mysteries, fighting bad guys, and evading the law for a crime they didn’t commit. The A-Team was born. Cannell’s insane, explosive creation struck a chord with audiences, and it remains a timeless classic to this day. It’s still a fun watch in 2026, but it’s very much of its era. NBC’s Approach To Making The A-Team Defined TV In The 1980s The A-Team’s goofy, lighthearted action defined the television of the 1980s. The ’80s brought a wave of cheesy, campy action-adventure shows. The cops of Miami Vice dressed in tacky disco suits and sailed around in go-fast boats; the titular Magnum, P.I. wore garish Hawaiian shirts and the greatest mustache in American history; and David Hasselhoff talked to his car in Knight Rider. What made The A-Team so endearing was its inconsequential violence. There was lots and lots of violence — fights, shootouts, car chases — but no bloodshed whatsoever. Two parties would shoot at each other, but they would only fire considerate warning shots. A car would flip off the side of a jungle road, and everyone inside would emerge unscathed. Now that action shows like The Boys and Reacher are so shamelessly gruesome (which is fun in its own way), it can be refreshing to go back to something as harmless and lightweight as The A-Team. Source: GQ The A-Team Release Date 1983 - 1987-00-00 Showrunner Stephen J. Cannell