On this day in 1986 Boy George guested on The A Team and B A Baracus is shown groovin’, if not movin’, to Karma Chameleon.
For those of tender years The A Team was a TV programme built around a group of ex marines (or something), who had been banged up in the stockade (or somewhere), after being falsley accused of something, or other.
There were 4 members of the A Team George Peppard played the colonel, the leader. Mr T was B A Baracus, the token big hard black man. (Before you dissagree and say that it was not tokenism. Do you think that any black actor would have been given the role of colonel back then?). The ladies’ man was played by Dirk Benedict (ex Battlestar Galatica star). Last but defo not least was mad, not bad, Murdock played by Dwight Shultz (who also played the slightly mad Reginald Barclay in Star Trek The next Generation).
In this episode Boy George played himself, not such a hard gig then. The plot is that Face has signed this band (Cowboy George) to play this dance hall to make a few bucks. However, his contract allows artists to be substituted and Boy George turns up to play in red-neck-mid-west-shoot-em-first country. (You know where that is it is next to the bobbies-with-pointy-hat-red-double-decker-buses-going-past-Big-Ben land on the LA film lot). There is also the usual crooked sheriff and something about a bank heist……
This was part of the 4th series of The A team during which the audience plummeted (not Boy Georges’ fault) and the improbable let’s-make-a-tank-out-of-2-oil-drums-and-a-Beetle scenes became more ludicrous.. The explosions became louder and more, well, explosive and still no one was ever killed!
The two good bits of the episode are Murdock revealing his taste in music when he plays The Lennon Sisters* singing “Too Marvellous for Words” and Boy George playing to a redneck audience, and them loving him….
The A Team was always fantasy.
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