Modernisation of the A-Team (The Unit)

Member Name: moo2moo

Product:	The Unit
Date:	09/11/09 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Only on for an hour

Disadvantages: The wives. Why oh why are they included?

Got a job to do that no one else can handle and that it would be very naughty to actually carry out then you need The Unit. The parallels with the 1980s A-Team are glaringly obvious. Both groups are comprised of US Special Forces soldiers answering only to those members of the US government who know they exist.

The black operations members of Delta Force don't exist on paper anywhere (apart from with the gas company and the electricity company and their phone provider), their fingerprints aren't on any government data base so they can't be tracked down when they commit a crime and mostly they commit a lot of crimes but as these are always against baddies its apparently acceptable.

Last weeks episode featured the retrieval of a friends daughter from a cult (did I mention that on their days off they help others illegally - it's the A-team all over again). Accidentally along the way the girls mother murdered the cult leader, her finger prints were wiped from the murder weapon and they left without a backwards glance. On their way to safety they and their co-hort, a disabled ex-soldier in a wheelchair, lied to the police, stole an aeroplane and started a fight with some marines and arrived back at work on Monday just in time to start work having phoned a friend (their boss) to retrieve them from a prison cell.

Taken with a pinch of salt its watchable if very far fetched but then no one watched the A-team because of the storyline. We all tuned in to see what wacky escape plan the guys could hatch in an empty disused barn guarded by a deaf moron who wouldn't notice several hours worth of crashing and banging as the team ripped apart the building and set about with angle grinders making flames throwers when simply driving their van through a rotten wall would have been so much easier.

The makers have overlooked quite a few things. I mean show me a serving soldier without an assortment of scars and I'm pretty sure his job would involve pushing bits of paper around a desk. The eight guys of this top secret unit are scar free. Theres the occasional cut and bruise and the odd bottling in a bar fight but theres never any lasting trace of damage.

Sadly the makers saw fit to include glimpses into the members of The Units home lives and we have to endure cosy chats in the kitchen with their wives all of whom know what their husbands do for a job and spend hours discussing it together in one anothers kitchens. I'm sure this is to make it appeal to a wider audience but it detracts from an otherwise entertaining programme.

Currently shown on Fiver at 9pm on week nights.

Summary: Almost as entertaining as The A-team