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Given an "irresistable" supermarket price, I bought the 1993-97 episodes in a two-box set of 8 DVDs - primarily because I had enjoyed TV's "Hornblower" greatly and knew that Bernard Cornwell himself had come up with the idea for the Sharpe novels having himself been devoted to CS Forester's smashing books. Sad to say I have not read the Cornwell novels (though am now interested to do so), but was from the outset aware that, while ITV's "Hornblower" did have some "land battle" episodes for the sailors to participate in alongside the Army, it was obviously primarily concerned with Royal Navy life, and shipboard life - which is obviously possible to capture with a relatively small cast, most especially if you have a suitable ship in real life, as the makers of course did! In contrast, the battles of the Peninsular War - even the more minor engagements - involved thousands of men - to say nothing of the camp followers - so TV's "Sharpe" was always going to face problems with this issue, as it indeed does. It's definitely a case - a la Henry V - of "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. Into a thousand parts divide one man. And make imaginary puissance." But each episode lasts 90 minutes or so, and as they pass, the cast size limitations seem to matter less and less, all the more so as the stories are rather (surprisingly) diverse, and do their best to set up a range of situations of interest. On-location shooting (even with authentic bird sounds!) counts for a very great deal here, but there is romance, intrigue, a touch of mystery, and a whole panoply of "cases" involving characters among both officers and men. The core cast of characters come to mean a lot to the viewer, somewhat at the cost of reality, given their high survival rates in the face of men dropping like flies all around them, but obviously this is a necessity in programme-making. In these circumstances, it is rather surprising how few lines the "Chosen Men" characters other than Sergeant Harper (Daragh O'Malley) actually get, though John Tams gets to sing his songs in his very characteristic way, and pretty moving they are too. At the start of the first episode, before Sharpe whips them into shape (almost literally), Harper and the others are extremely unlikeable and mutinous, so we are asked to believe that a good officer who leads from the front can really turn "the scum of the earth" into "fine fellows". Indeed that was of course the Duke of Wellington's real-life claim and boast. Anyway, to those who have come through a fair few episodes of "Sharpe" it becomes increasingly notable that there are moments of restrained or unrestrained anger, passion, dissatisfaction, pain or sadness portrayed around the key characters that strike the faithful viewer with particular - at times almost overwhelming - force. That is good TV. There are also particular scenes, usually lasting just moments, when one suddenly has a powerful impression that one is looking at actual history, or at least painted portraits of those battle scenes, or else scenes post- or pre-fighting. Again this a considerable and quite precious reward for the seasoned viewer, and one that comes quite unexpectedly given a certain clumsiness at moments in the episodes. The enemy (mainly French) characters are also handled extremely well in my view, all the more so given that most are native speakers of French. Feodor Atkine as Major Ducos is great, though he is by no means alone among "the Frogs" (as they are dubbed in the series) in giving a classy and convincing performance. Each episode also rewards with its own set of character actors, many of whom would go on to greater fame - Julian Fellowes, Alice Krige, Michael Cochrane, Pete Postlethwaite, Emily Mortimer, even Daniel Craig, and many more give value for money. Against this background, questions might be asked about Sean Bean's acting in the title role, but then he is playing a working class man of very low origins thrust up by stages into ever higher echelons of the officer corps, and - to my mind at least - his occasional awkwardness really fits the bill. As the character himself notes at the end of the episode "Sharpe's Siege", he is no longer fully at home among either officers, NCOs or men, but has "made his bed and must lie in it". It's all very well worth watching, for those with the patience to follow the series through in full - and that's actually quite a few hours, I'm personally content to say.
score 9/10
jrarichards 26 December 2015
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3380988/ |
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31-3-2021 00:05:42