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Sharpe
1993 · TV series · 90 min episodes · 7 seasons
Sharpe is a British series of television dramas starring Sean Bean as Richard Sharpe, a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Sharpe is the hero of a number of novels by Bernard Cornwell; most, though not all, of the episodes are based on the books. Produced by Celtic Films and Picture Palace Films for the ITV network, the series was shot mainly in Turkey and the Crimea, although some filming was also done in England, Spain and Portugal. The series originally ran from 1993 to 1997. In 2004, as part of ITV's new set of drama, ITV announced that it intended to produce new episodes of Sharpe, in co-production with BBC America, loosely based on his time in India, with Sean Bean continuing his role as Sharpe. Sharpe's Challenge is a two-part adventure; part one premiered on ITV on 23 April 2006, with part two being shown the following night. With more gore than earlier episodes, the show was broadcast by BBC America in September 2006.
4 positive5 neutralfrom 9 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
It's so weird how many good shows are not on any of the platforms. So much of what the platforms create is utter crap. Yet there's amazing shows only available on DVD.
Recently bought and watched the Hornblower series. Amazing. Star Trek like atmosphere, exploration of new worlds etc (the show has less violence and a lot more good intentions than reality which i prefer in my times of relaxation), on a ship during the Napoleonic wars. Amazing. All the episodes of the miniseries are ~8 on imdb, deservedly so.
Yet you wouldn't know this excellent series existed based on what the platforms show.
Sharpe's another good one. I'm guessing there's bias against non-US made content but as someone not from the UK or the US wow what a blindspot!
The drunk roaring about 'perfumed ponces' is none other than Daragh O'Malley, the fantastic second-fiddle to Sean Bean in the 'Sharpe' TV series, and voices the lawyer in Grim Fandango amongst other roles!
The family overall are well worth reading up on - his father was the Minister for Education who introduced free secondary education to Ireland, and his Mother was a muse of Patrick Kavanaghs and the subject of the famous ballad "On Raglan Road". His father Donogh, was even originally engaged to Richard Harris's sister, Audrey (who died during their engagement of leuekemia aged 21).
Yeah, in my experience it's common for streaming sites to have worse quality than is available to a pirate.
A concrete example: I want to watch Sharpe. Netflix doesn't have it, which isn't surprising because they never have anything I'm looking for. Amazon has it for $4 an episode at SD quality, and I have to watch it in my browser with their shitty webplayer because they're afraid I'm going to save it to my harddrive (lmao.)
So instead I pirated it and got 720p for free. It's now on my hard drive and I can watch it with my proper media player. Pirating being free is really just the icing on the cake, I might have paid $4 an episode if they would give me a DRM-free 720p downloads, but that simply isn't an option. Why isn't it an option? I can and do buy DRM-free albums from Amazon. Albums which are smaller and easier to share than movies or TV shows, yet are still offered DRM free. The TV/movie industry get away with offering inferior crippled products because not enough people know how to pirate movies. But I do, so I'm not their chump.
I think I'd disagree with the assertion about Elijah Wood, Deep Impact was a pretty big film and he had a key role in that. He also had many other roles before that in some pretty notable films, especially The Faculty and heck, he was playing alongside Kevin Costner in 1994!
Perhaps I am just old, and a keen film watcher, but I wouldn't describe him as a lesser known actor at that point in his career.
Also, Sean Bean has long been a well known supporting actor. Anna Karenina, Goldeneye, Patriot Games, etc. But I would concede that he's very much more well known in the UK because of his TV roles, especially Sharpe which ran for 7 series. Again, not a lesser known actor if you're playing the bad guy in a Bond film.
Which makes Sharpe so much more impressive, he saved Sean Bean over multiple episodes / movies!
He was in the Sharpe movies as well
The Sharpe series is decent too and has an excellent accompanying TV series (of the same time period).
The series "The Last Kingdom" is based on the books by Bernard Cornwell. He also wrote the "Sharpe" books, which were adapted to several TV films (starring Sean Bean). They're set around the Napoleonic Wars, with some of them in India.
Same, as one badly constructed book (or season of a TV series) can ruin the whole lot if they're all sequential.
It's become so much of a trope that it's become a pet hate. I actively avoid buying any that is "first of..." now, no matter how famous you are. The few times I break this rule, I generally regret it. Most trilogies are just a book, heavily padded. So I simply won't buy unless all are written, and well reviewed. Then, do I buy all or none.
There are just a tiny few that deserve it. Archer's Clifton Chronicles, Follett's Century Trilogy, Stross' own Merchant Princes (1-6 anyway, skip the new ones) were all marvellous and fully deserved a series. Yet most are unworthy. Song of Ice and Fire - great idea, so much padding and so little direction. Good book, awful series. I forget where I gave up. Cornwell's The Saxon Stories was mostly great, but I preferred the battle by battle progression of Sharpe without having to achieve perfect continuity or care much what order I read them.
Much prefer the random peeks into a universe approach of Sharpe, Discworld, or Follett with the Kingsbridge series where there's hundreds of years between the books. Or Adam's HHGTTG leaping all over the galaxy with continuity that can leave Marvin in a car park for a millennium. Even Charles Stross reads far better if simply ignoring Laundry Files as series. Lots of unconnected episodes and forget the underlying destination or continuity. It's the only way I can carry on when there's been two books that really didn't work. Well, more one book and one ending that failed hard.
Atrocity Archives and the other Bob books were some of the most entertaining, delightfully observed comedy fiction I've read. Nightmare Stacks didn't really join up, but was a rollicking good tale, and some interesting new characters.
Labyrinth Index on the other hand, was disjointed and unfinishable (The only book from Charles, one of my favourite authors, I can't finish). It should have been a book of Alex, Bob or Cassie. Anyone but Mhari, who might have worked here if given a red shirt to die spectacularly in chapter 2. She's not even anything like the Mhari as created in previous books.
The only way I can react to that is simply ignore as series, tuning out continuity, or stop buying.