Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Sharpe's Rifles

Well BBC America just started showing the Richard Sharpe series with Sean Bean. He mostly plays villians over here. It was great to see him in a leading role. I'm posting because we have many members from the U.K. here. Anyway this whole series has been an eye-opener for me. Bernard Cornwell has written 240 novels in about 4 different history of Britain series plus some others.
Any other fans here?

Artemis

I'm a huge fan of the Sharpe series. I found the books (I read a few after watching the series) to be a little lightweight and slim reading. But the series was beautifully done, lavishly presented, terrific historic detail, and the cast was superb. Although I'll admit my heart beats a little faster more for Daragh O'Malley as Patrick Harper than for Sean Bean's Sharpe.

I just love everything about it. The locations, the adventures, the humour, the banter between the Chosen Men - of course I have a real soft spot for Hagman and Harris - the music... Back in the day when these were first aired in the UK (few years back now) it was a real treat to settle down in front of the TV on a Wednesday evening for another two hour adventure with Sharpe and his Chosen Men.

I have the whole thing on boxed set DVD - well worth the money if you're really keen, Artemis. It contains all 14 (as it was then) two hour adventures on a 15 disk set for around £50 sterling. Great value.

The only adventure it doesn't contain is the recent surprise of a brand new adventure in India for our heroes that aired here just a week or so ago. I'd almost given up hope of seeing it. Got it on my Wish List now though. <g>

Hope you enjoy the others in the series, Artemis.

LabRat

"Sharpe's Challenge". Yes, that's going to wind up the series on BBCAmerica. The books are a bit pricey at $10 for a paperback. We're going to try to find them in a Barnes & Noble or Borders book store. I saw the boxed set for $139 on Amazon. What year did it air in the U.K.?

Artemis

The original 14 two-hour dramas were aired over a period of years.
Here\'s the complete listing, courtesy of TV Tome.

There was much speculation after the series ended with Sharpe's Waterloo in '97 that at least one more adventure would be filmed. But it got bogged down in speculation and false rumours and never seemed to get off the ground as a project.

So it was a great surprise to be channel hopping a week or so ago and find it on! I didn't actually get to see it either because I had to record something else both nights it was on. So I'm looking forward to catching up with it on DVD eventually.

BTW, if BBC-A ever gets it, too, watch out for Hornblower. A kind of 'Sharpe At Sea'. <g> I've just recently caught up with these and enjoyed them a lot. They're not as good as Sharpe, imo, but a reasonably entertaining second best. Same format - two hour dramas - same lavish attention to detail, great cast, good plots and action. I think if you enjoy Sharpe, you'll probably enjoy Hornblower.

LabRat

He he, going to make you jealous now... :p

I was in India when they were filming Sharpe's Challenge and we watched some of it being filmed. Not so much out of choice, just that every fort and palace we seemed to visit, Sean Bean was two steps ahead of us. I don't really watch the programme but it was really interesting to see a TV show being made.

We also had to spend a lot of time explaining to taxi drivers that it wasn't the BBC (over here it's shown on ITV, an independant chanel, although I'm now slightly confused with it being on BBC America), it wasn't going to be a big Hollywood film, and it wasn't Hugh Grant/Tom Cruise/Robert De Niro/insert any well known actor here...

And Hornblower, I read the books as a kid, and loved them, so I really liked the show too (Ioan Gruffudd helped )

Helga

Helga, following Sean Bean around ain't too bad a deal!
Actually Hornblower has been on here on TNT or A&E or some other channel. And it's on DVD on Amazon.com. We started it, but had trouble following the dialogue. The proper British accent was so thick you could cut it with a knife and the wind kept blowing at sea to further make it difficult. No studio dubbing? Ioan Griffudd was great and it was before he was known here.
One of the things we noticed right away in Sharpe's Rifles was that we could actually understand Sean Bean. Maybe because he's done so much work in America. Some of the other's accents we did have trouble with.
I loved Helen Mirrin in that London detective show, but we couldn't understand half the dialogue. Between the slang and the chewing of the words, it just didn't make sense to us.
I guess at 2 or 3 episodes a year for a season, we'd call Sharpe's Rifles a miniseries.
We had trouble with the "Chosen Ones" terminology because we'd never heard it. However, over here those men are called "sharpshooters" so we got the pun.
Great talking to you all (southern slang for more than one person )

Artemis

One word. Subtitles. <G> I quite often resort to putting the subtitles on while watching US shows. Without them, I tend to miss bits here and there when they're spoken too quickly or the accent makes them impossible to decipher. Helps no end.

LabRat

Ladies, thanks for the heads up! I had heard that they were filming a new movie in the series, but didn't realize that it had actually aired in the UK already! My husband and son are big fans of the entire series, so we'll be on the lookout.

Big fans of the Hornblower series in this house, too. We have all of them on DVD, and are disappointed to hear that they're not planning to make any more. We're keeping our fingers crossed in case they change their minds.

Kathy

I'm a fan - in fact I've just put a little parody of Sharpe and friends into a role playing game I'm writing as a charity project (all proceeds will go to Doctors Without Borders); it's based on Edwin Abbot's book Flatland, set in a 2D world where everyone is a flat geometrical figure and most of the soldiers are very pointy Isosceles triangles. So our triangular heroes are Lieutenant Sharp and Sergeant S'Harper (the S is silent, of course), and they're on a mission to rescue Mad King Euclid of Polygonia...

Here's a picture of Sharp as you've never seen him before:



And this one's S'Harper (it's very slightly blurry, but it gets reduced a lot smaller on the page so you can't tell)

Well, I did it. I bought the boxed set from Amazon.com. It includes every episode but "Sharpe's Challenge." That is going to be on BBCA while we are in Scandanavia, so we'll miss it. But I'll buy the DVD when it comes out.
Hmmm, I think at one time we did try Closed Captioning, as it's called here. But that's annoying too. We also like the Inspector Lynley series and didn't have so much difficulty with that one.

Artemis

Got my Sharpe's set! I really like the box (replica ammunition box) and very sturdy. The letter opener is balanced like a throwing knife and really opens letters well. The Napoleonic Map was interesting, but a little difficult to read. We are looking forward to seeing the whole series at our leisure.
Also bought 2 of Bernard Cornwell's books - "Sharpe's Trafalgar" and "Stonehenge". So we'll see how the novels read. We like historic novels. Hubby is a Steven Saylor fan. He writes Roman Britain. In fact we bought one of his books at a gift shop at Hadrian's wall. Homestead's I think.

Artemis

See my review on Amazon.com. You guys get credit!
Artemis\' Review

Artemis

That's cool, Artemis. I'm desperately envious of that case btw - we didn't get anything like that here in the UK. We got this Just the typical cardboard box set, although it is still a quality set, well presented. No letter opener either! :p

Ah well, I'd probably have problems storing it on my DVD shelves in that box anyway, so it's probably for the best.

LabRat

Hmmm. 49 pounds is a lot cheaper than $314. I might have taken the carboard box if it had been offered, but it wasn't. Oh well, it looks nice on the shelf.
We're enjoying them.

Artemis