We need the A-Team!

Hold the phone! Simmer down with all the talk about drunk judges, substandard matrics and presidential links to the Rhema Church. Something important is coming through on the wire.

A South African is to play “Howling Mad” Murdock in the new A-Team! Sharlto Copley of District 9 fame has been given the nod. He will be donning the jacket and the jaunty cap, busting out of the asylum, and firing up the chopper. M16s blazing. Ready to fight a world of dirty crime dogs.

What I don’t understand is where’s the fanfare? Why is this not on the front page of every newspaper in the land? Why isn’t the blogosphere buzzing with 80s delight? I don’t hear hacks scurrying for their notepads. The switchboard is not ablaze with excitement. No one seems to care.

This is the A-Team, folks. This is Hannibal. The real one, not that douchebag from Silence of the Lambs. This is B.A. Not some B.S. about another dirtbag politician who hoodwinked a brother out of some cash. No, that’s the sort of guy B.A. likes to wail on. Suck on this, sucka. And then Bam! The bad dude gets a mouthful of badass gold bling. This is a bunch of dudes who were sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit. Not a bunch of dudes who weren’t sent to prison for a crime they did commit. Hell, these are peeps we can dig. Heroes with a capital A. They are the A-Team.

So where is the love? Nowhere to be seen. I can already hear the comments being fistpunched into the keyboards, slowly plodding down the old Telkom lines. Dash-dot-dot-dash-David Smith, you suck balls. You need to get serious. This is a serious country we live in. People have real problems. Dash-dot-dot-we don’t need the A-Team. It is just another imperialist construct. A ploy by the wealthy nations to subjugate the poor. An Orwellian plot lifted straight from 1984. Give the bastards some heroes, it’ll keep them quiet while we keep fleecing them of their souls. Well humbug to the lot of you! I love the A-team! And I pity the fool who doesn’t. If the Sowetan is the only paper that thinks it is really awesome that a South African gets to play “Howling Mad” Murdock, then maybe the Sowetan is the only culturally relevant paper in our land.

Sorry Mr Mail&Guardian, I love you and all, and I know you’ve got all these cool journalism prizes and stuff but you missed a trick on this one. Where’s the article about Sharlto Copley getting the call from the Colonel? This is good news. Stuff to be celebrated but no, we want to talk about the race card, some Canadian who sells sprinklers and a CEO who got a pay rise. Well, it’s time to turn on the taps and cry because it looks like we need the A-Team.

What is it that we see in Bob Mugabe? Is it his little Hitler moustache or his merry band of war veterans that transfix us so? Come on, people, the A-Team has got all of that. War vets, minor tyrants, plot turns and more bullets than a Friday night in Mogadishu. And the beauty of it is that it’s done in 44 minutes, 60 if you include ad breaks. And the good guys always win. The last time I checked the Mugabe story, he was still there, he was still all-powerful and there was still no light on the horizon. Just a really long static shot of a grumpy old man sitting on his throne and refusing to move. You could have more fun watching Andy Warhol eat a hamburger on YouTube. No, this does not make for good entertainment. The rules state if your character hasn’t gone through a process of change, you don’t have a story. I can tell you right now, no one will be rushing out to make Zim II. But they have decided to remake the A-Team.

Sharlto, if you’re out there buddy, bring round the chopper, I’m in desperate need of an E-vac.