It probably wasn't Confucius that said it, but it's true nonetheless: old TV series never die, they just bring out the film. It happened with the Flintstones. It happened with Scooby Doo. It even happened, God help us, with Lost in Space. And now it's happening – or so Dame Rumour would have us believe – with the A-Team.

The A-Team! Remember them? Of course you do. If you ever wore a ra-ra skirt or a bodywarmer, if you ever listened to Bros or collected Transformers, you are part of the A-Team generation. You may not like the series (heathen), because it represents the worst excesses of paranoid 80s fuck-you-Jack Reaganism, with guns. Then again, you may love it for the very same reason. The A-Team was one of the most successful of a crop of American series which celebrated – before huge national and international audiences – what was essentially vigilantism. There were loads of them. Think about it. Off the top of my head I can remember four, all of which are currently being repeated on cable TV, and surely the time has come to make money off the back of these tired old franchises by making a series of summer blockbusters that will put the various iterations of Jurassic Park and Toy Story to shame?

Stand up Knight Rider. Saddle up, Streethawk. Come in Airwolf. You've just hired the A-Team. For the information of those of you who are yet ignorant of the joys of this one-time Fantastic Four, a little crib sheet:

Knight Rider: Oh come on, everybody knows Knight Rider. David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight, reconstructed former policeman/racing driver/cabbie and his camp talking car KITT? Devon? Bonnie? The big van control centre thingy Michael drove KITT up into when he wanted to consult Devon on something? Ring any bells? Knight Rider, notable for DH's chest hair and habit of helping beautiful wmen out of trouble, was possibly the most successful series ever until Baywatch. The common denominator? David Hasselhoff. Proof that there is no God, or certainly not of TV schedules.

Streethawk: Basically a bandwagon-jumping motorcycle rip-off of Knight Rider. Bike cop Jesse Mock (stupid name, isn’t it? They get worse) is injured in a cross-country rally and sulks for a bit feeling like an excluded, unemployed cripple. Which he is. Then Norman Tuttle (told you), all the way from the FBI (probably) approaches him with an offer of new knees and a top-secret experimental superbike to ride. For some reason Jesse dithers, before accepting, becoming Streethawk (secret double identity: Jesse Mock, desk cop) and following the Michael Knight pattern of helping those in need, i.e. anything in a skirt. He also wanders around in a towel, flashing his hard-won abs, a lot.

The A-Team: "In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they did not commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security prison to the Los Angeles underground, where they survive as soldiers of fortune ..." I can't write any more, I'm tearing up here. The A-Team was four former soldiers on the run – a mad one, a pretty one, an old one and a black one. When they took on the might of the US Military and police, how could they possibly lose? The Team specialised in rather more exotic adventures than Michael Knight or Jesse – they used to go off all over the world to fight evil, mainly as a plot device to give Murdock (their pilot) some semblance of a role within the team. My God, it's all coming back to me – these were the guys on everybody's lunchbox when we were ten.

Airwolf: Basically a bandwagon-jumping helicopter rip-off of the A-Team. I have never, to my eternal shame, seen an entire episode, but I'm willing to bet that they did everything the A-Team did, but with a smaller budget, in a helicopter.

So now you know the gang. But why (you may ask) do I, we, everybody, still care? What was it about the do-gooders on the fringes of the law that fascinated the children (and adults) of mid-80s America? Didn't they trust their police and judiciary to bring gun-runners, drug-dealers, cult leaders and other performers of un-American activities to justice? Was there a profound psychological need for lone-wolf caped crusaders in, variously, their talking car, their motorbike, their helicopter and their van to save the day by teatime? I can only assume the reason for the success of these series must have run deeper than the desire to see David Hasselhof flash his chest hair. I hope so. Children have always needed heroes, but the interesting thing about the heroes of the programmes mentioned above is that they have all passed, if not beyond the veil, beyond the pale. Often they are flawed in some way ("Howlin' Mad" Murdock, lame Jesse Mock – and wasn't Michael Knight an amnesiac?) and they certainly set themselves up in opposition to the (usually corrupt) forces of the law. Kids identify with anti-authoritarian figures, sure – but why, at the ripe age of 25, am I still watching the A-Team and waiting breathlessly for the film to come out? Is it pure nostalgia? Pure Peter Pan syndrome? An unbearable crush on David Hasselhoff et al? No, I don’t think so. You know what I think it is? Pure kitsch.

Kitsch is the reason. I have a child's GI Joe T-shirt which I treasure and wear all the time. Why do I love it so? Because it's kitsch. My purse is Barbie, I have an A-Team poster above my bed, I have a glitterball hanging from my light and a fibre lamp beside my desk. I kitsch, therefore I am. What could possibly suit me better than a lazy weekend lunchtime watching the shows of my childhood, which by virtue of their age now have added kitsch value? And what could possibly stop me being the first in the queue when the film of the A-Team hits my local Odeon, even though Jim Carrey will inevitably play Murdock? Nothing, that's what.

Comrades, it is time to watch the teatime TV of our past, for in them lie the movies of our future.

Whisky Priestess

Discuss this article: Underground: Film & TV