He'll Cure What Ails Ya

Earlier, I made reference to a two-day Sharpe-a-thon, interrupted only by dinner at my brother-in-law's in-laws. What is a Sharpe-a-thon, you ask? Why, it is a marathon watching of the first two collections of Masterpiece Theater's early/mid-90's miniseries presentation of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books, of course!

"Very well, thanks for nothing - who, or what, is a Sharpe?"

Richard Sharpe (Sean Bean, Ronin, The Fellowship of the Ring) is a British rifleman whom we first meet during King George III's invasion of India (not a part of the MT Sharpe's Rifles collection, but the subject of the book Sharpe's Tiger, and it is referenced several times during the miniseries). He's the sort of person for whom the army was a substitute for the gallows - in other words, a thoroughly disreputable brawling, thieving sort who grew up (and spent many adult years) living by the maxim that "all that was needed to get ahead in the world was a bit of sense and the ability to kick a bastard faster than the bastard could kick you." Sharpe's Rifles introduces him after he's made Sargeant for heroic enactment of duty in India, having survived that area and continued on to soldier in the Crimean War, and the film series opens with him saving Sir Arthur Wellsley's (the future Field Marshall Lord Wellington's) life. Wellsley promptly rewards Sharpe with a field commission, and so it begins. Sharpe is suddenly a man who belongs nowhere - he is no longer accepted by the men in the ranks, because he's an officer, but he is held in contempt by (and doesn't fit in with) his fellow officers, because he's been raised from the ranks, and is not a gentleman as 99.999% of officers were at the time...which, combined with the fact that he has Wellsley's special attention, makes him perfect for running all those dirty, nasty little Intelligence-based missions. He's competent, he gets the job done, and no one will mourn him too much if he never makes it back. The series is primarily about the missions assigned to Sharpe and his Chosen Men (essentially, a tiny special forces-esque squad), but it also carries overarching character plots involving Sharpe's and his sargeant's personal lives, and, as my brother-in-law pointed out, a continuing background focus on the time of transition between feudalism and democratic monarchy that Europe was embroiled in at that time. The series carries on through and past the Napoleonic Wars, and characters appear, grow, and die along the way.

High marks are given for casting and dialogue across the board. I also enjoy the fact that I can't think of any other historical fiction about the Crimean War, nor one that focuses on the infantry side of the Napoleonic Wars. Also, Sharpe himself is a well-fleshed, interesting character. He's a rogue - imagine Han Solo in the period between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, adjusting to holding a lofty commission but hardly done with his past - but he grows out of the aspects of that personality that don't jive with his increasing responsibilities and authority. He's an excellent leader, if not just a tad mutinous in the face of any officer who's bad at soldiering, and we see him grow as a leader over the course of the series. He's still coarse and a product of his upbringing, the sort of man who can commit acts of great goodness and decency in front of another man, and still leave that man believing his (Sharpe's) tough-guy assertion that he just did it for the money. He's all for free love - but he's no sexual predator, and refuses sexual encounters with women who are desperate or vulnerable, and when he's married, he's married (at least to his first wife, but that's a story more complex than base adultery). In other words, he may work for British intelligence, but he's no James Bond - though a young Daniel Craig does make an appearance in Sharpe's Eagle, playing a hedonistic, Bond-like sadist who preys on women.

Something else, translated from the books to the series, that sets Sharpe apart is the fact that creator/author Bernard Cornwell is no historical denier. Cornwell is an atheist, and, judging by some of his works, a pretty angry one at that, but he doesn't take the low road of avoiding Europe's Christian heritage, or portraying all clergy or faithful as fools, idiots, bigots, or sadists. In the same vein, Cornwell's nobility, gentility, and officers are not universally afflicted with those afore-mentioned character defects, though of course there are some, because all the villains in a very long story can't be French...but it is clear that these men are abberrations, and exceptions - not, by any means, the norm. I make special mention of this because there are far too many writers who hold the idea that everyone who came before them was naive, or bigoted, or mysoginistic, just plain dumb...so in my books, any writer who gives the past a fair and informed shake gets a big gold star. Sharpe is not a renaissance man by any stretch, he's 100% a product of his time, but fool, idiot, or mysoginist, he is not.

Of course, there are some cheese issues; some budget-related, some early-90's Masterpiece Theater related. Such as, on the budget side of things, a company - and regiment - is just a tad bigger that four or five dozen men, and there was a point when I noticed that a stack of barrels and equipment was in fact not a stack, but a very obvious mural. I titled this post because in the first episode, Sharpe's Rifles, there is a terrifically unintentional laugh garnered when the mere sight of Sharpe (presumably due to Sean Bean's raw sexual magnetism) cures a girl's forced heroin trip. Probably, there was no other way to quickly move the narrative along; after all, you wouldn't get much story from Sharpe and co. dragging the female lead of the tale, reduced to a gibbering loony, around the countryside, and movies do have time limits. Still, it was unfortunately hilarious, and thankfully there were no further such shenanigans in later episodes. None of this should detract in a significant way from your enjoyment of the series, and the budgetary constraints don't have any significant impact on the overall quality of the show. Some of the constraints add to it, like casting a folk musician as one of the Chosen Men and using him to provide the music for the series - on-screen, too.

I've been flagrantly throwing around some history in this post. You can probably get entertainment out of Sharpe without knowing jack about things like the Crimean or Napoleonic Wars, or Lord Wellington, who never lost a battle (!)...but knowing about these things will not only provide a step up from entertainment to enjoyment and admiration; they're extremely fascinating subjects and I highly recommend them.

I previously watched a handful of Sharpe movies by finding them individually at Blockbuster, but if you can find the collections - Sharpe's Rifles, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Revenge - like we did at the library, it's worth watching them in sequence. There are also two or three movies additional movies made in the past few years. It's fun stuff, serious stuff, quality stuff - all around good TV. And, Sean Bean's presence may or may not cure any unintentional drug trips you may suffer, though why they don't advertise this on the box is beyond me.