The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 31

Thursday 9 February 1984 As if they need reminding: Murdock can fly anything (and does) and insists on singing arias while pitching and yawing his crazy flight path around the skies. What a team! There also is a tag-along Lois-Lane figure, the reporter Amy Allen (Melinda Culea), who finds the A-team in the pilot, then becomes their go-between in future episodes. The film-length episode establishes its characters and whys and wherefores in adroit fashion, leaving plenty of time for stunts, special effects and some wonderfully witty dialogue. "I love it when a plan comes together," says Hannibal when he's happy. Right.

I love it when a series comes together. Watch The A-Team and see what I mean. MICHAEL SHMITH Peter Nelson and Blair Tefkin in Channel 10, Tuesday and Wednesday. But the aliens' designs are just as sinister as Hitler's when he won the trust of the German people in the 30s. Scapegoats are found, only this time they are scientists; youth groups are established and dressed in the familiar brown uniforms of the Hitler Youth; as the aliens gradually take complete control "for the protection of the friends begin to inform on each other.

The allegories go on and on but just in case you miss them, there is even a token Jew who tells anyone who will listen that this is just how the holocaust started. There are several cameo characters but central to the story are Juliet, a young biochemist, and Mike, a freelance news cameraman who learns the truth about The Visitors. They are both rebels and in one of the most vulgar examples of hype yet, the program is dedicated to resistance fighters past, present and future. is certain to suck in viewers but it's another question entirely if the sloppy, sentimentalised script, shoddy performances, two-dimensional characterisations, interminable Hollywood choruses and disbelief stretched to snapping point eventually override their curiosity, as they did mine. Only one flash of irony really works the scene of an Earth youngster teaching a rapt alien how to play Space Invaders.

What a shame that the talent stopped there. BARBARA HOOKS BBC has come up with some neat ways of making friends, influencing people, succeeding in business, being a Love God at a party (you put your thumbs in your pants, look bored and sidle) and becoming powerful. It's all a joke, of course, but then so are books on how to influence people. This program parodies the lengths to which people will go to "There's got to be a system to it," our rather daggy subject, the world's least successful man, Arnold Quarmby, thinks out aloud. "There's got to be a set of rules you can write on the back of a cup." How To Pick Up Girls looks at "lifestyle a Very Significant new American science, which does things like tell you how you're doing at getting out of bed, if you're holding your cup of coffee in a fashionable way, if your inter-personal relationships are supportive, etc.

The program reveals how to arrange an office to your advantage (by putting your rival's ashtrays just out of his reach), provides lines which will instantly impress women at parties you come here often?" is the one they drag out) and tells how to achieve total power and world domination. At times, it looks as though the program really is about how to start up a conversation and that is even funnier. We see classes where couples exercise in having a conversation: "Nice opener, that's excellent." You have to stop and think for a moment that people actually give over their lives to these self-help development courses or whatever they're called. To a lesser extent, women's magazines tell you how to live your life, to the finest detail. I missed the last issue and I'm worried: I'm wondering if strawberries really can improve your sex life and if so, shouldn't we all rush out to buy punnets full? PETER WILMOTH What a great team The A-Team.

Channel 10, 8.30pm. Also Wednesday, 7.30pm. A Baracus (the 'B A' stands for Bad Attitude) has all the size and aggression of a small tank. He is black, squinty-eyed and ready to become the new hero of television. Played by Mr of Rocky fame, A has a lot going for him.

So does the rest of the A-Team, which collectively brings to television a program that is fast, unpredictable, zany and often very funny. So often have we come to expect American series to be the equivalent of fast food, that we become surprised when something emerges from the Hollywood kitchens in the form of true haute cuisine. Thus The A-Team is welcome and may it maintain the standard of the two episodes I have seen (the film-length pilot for the series, which screens on Monday and one of the subsequent episodes). The plot is a combination of The Dirty Dozen and The Magnificent Seven, in which four Vietnam veterans, falsely accused of robbing the Bank of Hanoi and unable to prove their innocence, are on the run. Ten years in hiding, the team is still being hunted by the authorities while at the same time eking out a career as soldiers of fortune; flying off at the cocking of a pistol to stifle revolutions in South America or rescue others in distress.

George Peppard plays the cigar-munching leader of the team. Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, with a glint in his eye and the occasional huge grin. Then there is Templeton Face Peck, played in the pilot by Tim Dunigan (he is replaced in the series proper by Dirk Benedict). He is the smooth-talking con-man, the one responsible for organisation. Then comes the aforementioned A whose actions speak louder than the few words he is permitted in the script.

A is the mechanical (if not verbal) genius of the team. He is also vulnerable: he hates flying and has to be knocked out with Novocain and carried, comatose, aboard the aircraft and later persuaded that he hasn't been up in the air at all. But the best character of them all is "Howlin' Mad" Murdock (Dwight Schultz), the pilot who is out of his mind. Every time he is needed for a job he has to be released from the lunatic asylum. "I'm the one who's crazy," he keeps reminding the others.

is for vacuous V. Channel 10, 8.30pm. Also 8.30pm Wednesday. IF AMERICAN network television confined itself to producing escapist entertainment, which it does well, instead of morality drama, which it does appallingly, could have been gripping stuff. It has some convincing special effects (in among some disappointing ones), moments of genuine suspense and, had it not been suffocated by a blanket of deep and meaningful messages, an interesting theme.

A heavily allegorical tale, it parallels Nazi Germany with Earth after the arrival of "friendly" aliens who promise their superior technology in exchange for a couple of simple chemicals necessary for their survival. Of course, they are welcomed with barely a hint of suspicion or incredulity, just curiosity. How to be a big hit How To Pick Up Girls, Win Arguments And Influence People. Channel 2, 8pm. DALE Carnegie was wrong.

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