Well sir, upon sighting the series, I naturally gave the order for it to be reviewed on my blog. That's my style, sir.
The moment the electric guitar kicks in you know you're in for an entertaining couple of hours of Sean Bean killing Frenchmannys and calling English toffs "bastards." Or possibly the other way around...
Sharpe's Rifles
My memory of this series was faulty - I remembered this initial episode as being fairly average, with a minimal plot due to the need to set up all of the main characters, not only Sean Bean's Richard Sharpe - surely still his best and most memorable role, despite all the many things he has died been in since - but the rest of the Chosen Mannys, not to mention the premise of the Napoleonic setting of 1809, just as the British army is about to invade French-occupied Spain.
But this is only partially correct - there is a lot of setting up and introducing of main characters, which occupies most of the first half of the 100 minute episode duration, though the characters are almost without exception introduced organically, with a chance for every one to show a bit of unique personality, and likewise the exposition is very cleverly handled. Brian Cox (not that one) as Major Hogan, the intelligence officer W-wording directly for David Troughton's General Arthur Wellesley (who has not yet been made the Duke of Wellington and regenerated into Hugh Fraser), delivers most of the exposition to Sharpe and via him to us the viewers, but as Sharpe has only just been made an officer the show has a built-in excuse for him not to know much about Hogan's schemes until he is told them.
Where the episode gets good is after the "proper officers" Major Dunnett and Captain Murray (played by proper poshos Julian Fellowes and Tim Bentinck respectively) get killed off in a French ambush, Sharpe is left in command of a rag-tag group of Player Characters, the crack shots of the Chosen Mannys squadron who all carry the rifles of the episode title. They don't treat him with automatic respect due his rank because he is not a proper officer, having only just been made a lieutenant (I can't wait until Sharpe gets promoted again so I don't have to spell that word any more, mew) by Wellesley at the beginning of the story. Therefore Sharpe has to win his mannys' respect, which he sets about doing by being a dirty fighter just like them, but he also shows his intelligence by the use of cunning ruses to outwit and escape from a French force that outnumbers them and just generally has them at a disadvantage.
The plot really gets underway when the Chosen Mannys team up with some Spanish guerillas, led by Commandante Teresa Moreno (Assumpta Serna, almost the only woman in this whole programme but doing enough acting to more than make up for it) who soon becomes Sharpe's love interest. We also see the beginning of Sharpe's relationship with Sergeant Patrick Harper (Daragh O'Malley) as they go from enemies to lovers best friends over the course of the episode - Harper starts off trying to kill Sharpe in a mutiny after the "proper officers" are all killed, and ends up sticking around to save the day in one of the coolest set-piece scenes in the whole series (you might think the show is playing its paw a little early, but just wait until the next programme...) when he kills two French cavalrymannys in just a few seconds.
The various plot strands that have been set up then all come together for an impressive climax that succeeds really well as the first instalment in a series, with Sharpe and co achieving a symbolically significant victory that foreshadows the greater victories they will win in later stories. So I guess you could say that on it's own Sharpe's Rifles is a touch lacking, because some of the later ones take what it does well and do it better, building on the excellent setting up done here without the need to establish series premise and characters. But there's still a lot to recommend about this opener on its own merits.
Sharpe's Eagle
This was the first Sharpe novel written, which you can kind of tell from the way the author Bernard Cornwell absolutely stuffed the plot full of ideas, many of which might have on their own been the subject of a later book once the series was established, but here sharing space with all the other ideas.
In terms of the TV story, this is the best individual episode of the whole run, an absolute tour de force from start to finish (though, it must be said, not the best introduction to the series, which is why it was good that they adapted both it and Sharpe's Rifles together). This is the episode that introduces the classic Sharpe trope of Sharpe vs the toffs instead of the French, because although there are two battles with the French in the story, there are no named French characters as baddys this time.
Instead we have Sir Henry Simmerson, colonel of the South Essex regiment, as played by Michael "Redvers Fenn-Cooper" Cochrane, the most instantly hateable of all the English upper class officers to appear in the entire series. His cowardice and incompetence sets the plot in motion when he bungles a mission to destroy a bridge over a Spanish river, resulting in the death of his second-in-command Major Lennox (who Sharpe has backstory with and respects) and the dishonour of the regiment when the French force nicks off with "the King's Colours" i.e. the regimental standard.
As he lies dying, Lennox asks Sharpe to take the French equivalent, an "Imperial Eagle," at the upcoming battle to restore their lost honour, and Sharpe silently vows to do so, hence the name of the story. This is followed by one of the greatest scenes of the series in which Simmerson is disciplined by General Arthur Wellesley - easily David Troughton's finest scene - who gives Simmerson enough rope to hang himself by trying to blame anyone and everyone else and Simmerson ends up completely humiliated. Troughton exploding with anger when Simmerson tries to pin the blame on the dead Major Lennox is perfectly timed, demonstrating Wellesley's contempt for the cowardice and dishonourable behaviour of Simmerson. Cochrane, it has to be said, is also superb as he plays what must be the ultimate screen bounder.
When Sharpe gets promoted to the rank of captain after the fiasco, which is as much to spite Simmerson and his nepotistic attempt top get his own nephew promoted as it is for Sharpe's own merits, Simmerson sends his nephew and another lieutenant named Berry (played by a young and unknown Daniel "Bond, James Bond" Craig, the first of a succession of before-they-were-famous actors to play Sharpe's baddys or henchmannys-of-the-week) to kill Sharpe.
Berry comes pretty close to killing Sharpe while on a night patrol, but forgets that Sharpe has mannys on his side and Harper kills Berry first. There's so much focus on Sharpe himself and the variety of guest characters (Cornwell stuffing this story with a much larger guest cast than most Sharpe stories) that there isn't much time for the Chosen Mannys to get screentime - again it is a good thing they all got their chance in the first episode - but Harper gets enough here to become well-established as the main secondary character, which will of course continue for the rest of the series.
Other guest actors of note include Brian Cox in his second and final appearance as Major Hogan, again giving the orders to Sharpe and being the main officer-on-Sharpe's-side, though their relationship is subtly different than in Sharpe's Rifles, since Sharpe is a bit more used to Hogan's ways by now, and a lot of the exposition is delivered not to Sharpe but by him, to the raw recruits of the South Essex regiment.
There's also Gavan O'Herlihy (recognisable because this was not long after he was in a pawful of episodes of Twin Peaks) as Captain Leroy, an inappropriate American Virginian. He has a subplot where he sort of gets on with Sharpe and helps him out when he needs money, but has his own motives for doing so, and he is an interesting character who adds a little bit more depth to the plot, but is another example of Cornwell throwing another character into the story even though he isn't strictly necessary.
I'm not sure this review can really do the episode justice in conveying just how great it is. It really is packed full of action and incident, and scarcely a moment is wasted. The baddys are proper boo-hiss baddys, and Sharpe and Harper and their allies seem even more heroic by way of contrast. This is the point where Sharpe really gets going.
The only downside one might find with the story is the fact that the series might just have peaked too early, what with this being only the second instalment, so it is going to need something special next time so that the follow-up doesn't feel like a letdown by comparison to this one. Something like a really great baddy...
