Sharpe. Sharpe is fucking class. I could give you a bunch of reasons why, culturally speaking, Sharpe is a thousand times greater than Swan Lake.... and I'm going to.
1) Harris, the singularly-monikered intellectual of the riflemen. Be sure, if there's ever a moment whereby Sharpe needs to tell someone to bugger off, be sure that Harris will piss him off by generally being a multi-lingual supergenius. Also, he looks like Ray Parlour's dad.
2) Dan Hagman, the Yorkshire-bred poacher with an eagle-eye and a good ear for a tune. In fact, he's so on the spot with the knees up I often wonder if he's been sent the advance copy of Bert Weedon's Play In A Day. Never plays Freebird though. Fucker.
3) And let's not go near Lieutenant Leprechaun.
4) The plot in every episode is exactly the same. Sharpe gets assigned to some stiff-nosed prick hot out of officer's school, always in a damn hurry to give the frogs a rodgering, thrashing, whatever. Inevitably they never take his advice, and he has to Jack Bauer it off to save the fucking day, again.
5) Brilliant revisionism; e.g. when "invent" hand grenades to defend some fort. In a later scene Harris beats Darwin to the punch with his improvised after-dinner speech on the origin of species.
6) Every fight scene ends with someone being kicked square in the balls.
Best programme with Ray Parlour's dad ever.
Portus Verdict: PPPPP
1) Harris, the singularly-monikered intellectual of the riflemen. Be sure, if there's ever a moment whereby Sharpe needs to tell someone to bugger off, be sure that Harris will piss him off by generally being a multi-lingual supergenius. Also, he looks like Ray Parlour's dad.
2) Dan Hagman, the Yorkshire-bred poacher with an eagle-eye and a good ear for a tune. In fact, he's so on the spot with the knees up I often wonder if he's been sent the advance copy of Bert Weedon's Play In A Day. Never plays Freebird though. Fucker.
3) And let's not go near Lieutenant Leprechaun.
4) The plot in every episode is exactly the same. Sharpe gets assigned to some stiff-nosed prick hot out of officer's school, always in a damn hurry to give the frogs a rodgering, thrashing, whatever. Inevitably they never take his advice, and he has to Jack Bauer it off to save the fucking day, again.
5) Brilliant revisionism; e.g. when "invent" hand grenades to defend some fort. In a later scene Harris beats Darwin to the punch with his improvised after-dinner speech on the origin of species.
6) Every fight scene ends with someone being kicked square in the balls.
Best programme with Ray Parlour's dad ever.
Portus Verdict: PPPPP
2 comments:
2) Dan Hagman is from Cheshire...see the first episode when Sharpe meets his charges. The accent is difficult to pick...he sounds Yorkshire but then again so do some Cheshire folk.
5) I think it's Colonel Brand (excellently played by Mark Strong) who proposes the 'survival of the fittest'...an idea that was in the air (actually coined by Herbert Spencer not Darwin) but I think the Napoleonic era was pushing it a bit from the scriptwriters.
The hang grenade (or petard - as in to be hoisted on ones own ie. holding on to it for too long) has been used as early as the English civil war. Difference with a hand grenade is that it fragments and causes more injury. More so than Sharpe's improvised bags of powder (unless they filled them with shrapnel/stones).
He does look like Ray Parlour's dad. Bravo!
I stand corrected - excellent knowledge sir. I thank you!
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