NEW - Sharpe's Challenge - This Sunday

Sharpe has to be the best historical drama ever made, great actors, guns, battles, history the lot. Anyway TV hasn't been the same since the Sharpe series finished at the battle of Waterloo but it now returns this Sunday on ITV. As for who is returning, the cast includes some familiar names


Sean Bean as Sharpe (lets face facts it wouldn't if it had been anyone else)
Daragh O'Malley as fighting Irishman Patrick Harper
Hugh Fraser as Wellington (Arthur Wellsley)
And my favourite bad guy from the Shapre series Michael Cochrane as Sir Henry.

The Sharpe shows were silly. The novels are very interesting, with well-drawn and convincing battles, though every story is completely formulaic and you get sick of them quickly. The TV series was just hopeless. The books cover vast battles - and the TV series can afford a cast of about ten or twelve extras. So what you got was Sharpe, Harper and Harris jumping onto some breastworks and fighting four or five French soldiers, then they'd shout 'Hurrah! We've won the battle of Toulouse!' [The Battle of Toulouse featured roughly 100,000 troops]

Correct, Cluny, that is what happened. The new one, however, will have better funding, and probably more extras. Just have to wait and see.

I'll give it a try I guess. I too felt the battles were more than a little anti climatic.

Plus Sharpe is supposed to have a bloody great scar across his face where Dodd sabre-cut him at Gawilghur. He's supposed to be bad-assed and battle-scarred. And Sean Bean looks pristine.

Anyone read Cornwells' grail series? I liked that better than Sharpe but Sharpe is good though