Movies - TV
The A-Team Was Forced To Follow A Strange Prime Time Rule
By JEREMY SMITH
Due to NBC network censors, “The A-Team” had to deliver deathless, bloodless gunplay to viewers every Tuesday night in the ‘80s, and one writer explained how the show did it.
“A-Team” writer Mark Jones told /Film, “It was NBC and it was eight o’clock. [NBC head] Brandon Tartikoff bought the show that Frank [Lupo] and Steve [J. Cannell] created.”
Jones continued, “[Frank and Steve said] ‘We need these guys to have guns and machine guns and all that stuff.’ [...] [NBC] said, ‘Okay [...] but you can’t kill anybody.’”
“So if you notice, they would shoot and the car would flip over and then they'd always cut to the guys crawling out because they didn’t want anybody to die,” Jones said.
He added, “It was kind of funny. It was a live-action cartoon [...] because NBC said, ‘The only way you can have shooting at eight o’clock is you can’t kill anybody.’’