Line #8 YMMV/Sharpe


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Did Lord Pumphrey really think [[spoiler: Astrid and Skovgaard]] were a threat to British interests, or did he want to murder a potential romantic rival for Sharpe? It is probably both.
2	* AluminumChristmasTrees: In his historical notes, Cornwell frequently lampshades those aspects of 18th and 19th century life that seem far-fetched to modern readers, including:
3	** The purchase system in the British army, which allowed officers to buy their way up the promotion ladder, regardless of military experience, or lack thereof.
4	** In ''Sharpe's Enemy'': an army of deserters living wild in the Portuguese mountains, and a "Rocket Troop" armed exclusively with William Congreve's AwesomeButImpractical rocket artillery. Both existed.
5	* AuthorAvatar: ''Sharpe's Fury'' features a Spaniard named Benito Chavez, a "chronicler" (writer) whose clothes are covered with broken tobacco leaves and whose fingers are permanently stained with ink.
6	* AwardBaitSong: The official soundtrack features [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErewG3rPCEk Broken Hearted I Will Wander]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjQzmriHn5I The Spanish Bride]].
7	* CantUnHearIt: It isn't possible to read any of the novels and not hear all Sharpe's dialogue in Creator/SeanBean's accent. Especially since Cornwell {{Ret Canon}}ed in that Sharpe spent some of his teenage years in Yorkshire.
8	* CompleteMonster:
9	** ''[[Recap/SharpeS2E1SharpesCompany Sharpe's Company]]'' & ''[[Recap/SharpeS2E2SharpesEnemy Sharpe's Enemy]]'': [[SerialRapist Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill]] lacks any of his book counterpart's redeeming qualities, however minor, while still maintaining his heinousness. Sharpe's ArchEnemy, Hakeswill was a SociopathicSoldier who was responsible for sentencing Sharpe to a [[ATasteOfTheLash flogging]] he knew would be a death sentence, before Sharpe was saved after receiving 200 lashes. An [[BadBoss abusive bully to his men]], Hakeswill regularly subjects soldiers to floggings to extort sexual favours from their wives and tries to rape Sharpe's wife Teresa. When Sharpe's best friend Harper stops him, Hakeswill [[FrameUp frames him for a theft]], resulting in his brutal flogging. Murdering one of his own soldiers to use his body as cover in the heat of battle, Hakeswill kills another soldier and tries to rape Teresa again. Hakeswill deserts the army before raping and murdering Sally Clayton, an innocent woman he's lusted after. Becoming the leader of a group of vicious bandits, Hakeswill waylays a group of noble women and is only stopped from raping them by warnings that it will damage the ransom value. When he learns Sharpe is bringing the ransom, Hakeswill doubles it at the last minute and allows his men to rape the non-noble women and tries to rape the nobles anyways. When Teresa stops him, Hakeswill fatally shoots her before being captured and facing the firing squad for his crimes.
10	** ''[[Recap/SharpeS4E3SharpesMission Sharpe's Mission]]'': [[TheMole Colonel Brand]] is a double agent who starts his career by personally killing an injured British officer, then carrying him back to the British lines and being [[VillainWithGoodPublicity hailed as a hero]] for trying to save him. This is the first of several acts of so-called heroism arranged by his handler French Colonel Cressan, who wants Brand to lure Sharpe and Ross into a trap. Brand murders a Gypsy couple who [[HeKnowsTooMuch saw him meeting Cressan]], then slaughters a Gypsy camp in a failed attempt to kill the couple's daughter, who also witnessed the meeting. He leads his men in massacring a group of French ex-deserters [[SuicideMission set up by Cressan]] and given faulty gunpowder so they were effectively unarmed, making a point of sadistically garroting the one who ran furthest. Despite giving them the self-aggrandizing name Brand's Boys, he has no loyalty to his men, calmly telling Sharpe that [[TheSocialDarwinist he abandons anyone who is injured]]. Even after being exposed and arrested, he tries to convince Sharpe to let him and his men massacre a fort garrison who have also been set up Cressan.
11	** ''[[Recap/SharpeF1SharpesChallenge Sharpe's Challenge]]'': [[AmbitionIsEvil William Dodd]], a traitor to the British army, massacred a full contingent of soldiers to turn warlord in India. Years later, Dodd manipulates a Maharajah as his chief commander to start a war, slaughtering an entire village--which is something he has done in the past--to ensure all his enemies will fear him. Dodd ensures every British soldier dies a torturous death, and when British lady Celia Burroughs is kidnapped, Dodd expresses his desire to painfully rape her. Intending on slaughtering the British military and [[TheStarscream murdering his benefactor]], Dodd attempts to flee when he has lost and murders [[EvilChancellor his lover Madhuvanthi]] before facing Sharpe himself.
12	** ''[[Recap/SharpeF2SharpesPeril Sharpe's Peril]]'': [[AristocratsAreEvil Colonel Count Vladimir Dragomirov]] is a [[SociopathicSoldier cavalry commander]] in India, who also has a foothold in the opium trade. To cover his tracks, Dragomirov slaughters the village that had been growing the plants needed to make opium, as well as a garrison of British soldiers, leaving their commander tied up naked and ExposedToTheElements. Dragomirov and his men "save" a baggage train led by Colonel Richard Sharpe, but only to make scapegoats of a group of bandits opposing them. When Sharpe is separated from the baggage train along with Marie-Angelique, the fiancée of Dragomirov's [[TheDragon dragon]] Major Philippe Joubert, Dragomirov threatens to have her gang-raped by his men unless Sharpe gives up the train, then has Sharpe tied up in a pit of snakes. When Sharpe and Marie-Angelique escape, Dragomirov pursues them to a village where the train has stopped, murders a priest that tries to dissuade him while telling the man "God does not work on a Sunday", and attacks the village with the intent of murdering everyone there. {{Greed}}y and treacherous, Dragomirov didn't care who he murdered as long as he gained something from it.
13	* FightSceneFailure: Any time the sabers come out, it tends to lead to a wholly unconvincing fight scene. With the actors dropping like stones from being lightly tapped on the jacket.
14	* GeniusBonus: When [=McCandless=] quotes part of Matthew 8:9 as an IronicEcho to Hakeswill, the full line fits the situation even better (and, ironically, may be a misquote)[[labelnote:The line...]]While the exact line is different depending on which version of Literature/TheBible you read, the closest is probably the King James Bible, which says "For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth." He misquotes it by saying "I say to ''a'' man", rather than "I say to ''this'' man", though it could be that the version he was quoting from isn't online[[/labelnote]]
15	* HilariousInHindsight:
16	** In ''[[Recap/SharpeS1E2SharpesEagle Sharpe's Eagle]]'', Sharpe gets into a fistfight with Lt. Berry, played by a young Creator/DanielCraig, so we have future Bond villain [[Film/GoldenEye Alec Trevelyan]] sparring against a future Film/JamesBond, respectively.
17	** In ''[[Recap/SharpeS3E2SharpesBattle Sharpe's Battle]]'', Sharpe's adversary, General Loup, has an {{Animal Motif}} of a wolf. Then Creator/SeanBean plays a nobleman, [[Series/GameOfThrones Eddard Stark]], whose family has a wolf as their {{Animal Motif}}.
18	** At the end of ''Sharpe's Battle'', Colonel Runciman is made a Baron. In ''Series/{{Dune}}'', Ian [=McNeice=] would play another Baron - Vladimir Harkonnen.
19	** In ''Sharpe's Challenge'', Sharpe battles against the evil William Dodd, played by Creator/TobyStephens, meaning the first and last villains from the [[Creator/PierceBrosnan Brosnan-era]] Franchise/JamesBond-films went head-to-head, with Alec Trevelyan coming out on top.
20	* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: In his historical note to ''Tiger'', Cornwell notes that later generations of Indians have lionized the Tippoo Sultan as a forerunner of the Indian Independence movement, simply because the largest battles fought by Mysore under his rule were against the British invaders. But Cornwell notes that the Tippoo was a Muslim ruling over a potentially rebellious majority Hindu population, and that his goal was never independence from British rule for all Indians, but rather Mysore's dominance over the other Indian kingdoms, ''"which was a very different thing."'' Cornwell then adds that no upgrade should be necessary because, regardless of his motives, the Tippoo was undoubtedly a brave man.
21	* HoYay: In universe, invoked and discussed with relation to Pumphrey and Sharpe:
22	-->'''Sharpe''': He's not...stuck up.
23	-->'''Hogan''': Richard, there is nothing Lord Pumphrey would like more than to be stuck up with you.
24	* MemeticBadass: Sharpe is already ridiculously badass, but any discussion of his abilities on forums will inevitably result in all agreeing that the English and Spanish didn't really need the rest of their armies, they could have just sent Sharpe himself and had done with it.
25	-->Richard Sharpe: The man so badass being played by Creator/SeanBean couldn't kill him.
26	* MemeticMutation:
27	** Tied in with MemeticBadass. It's generally agreed by fans that the reason Sean Bean dies so much is the universe balancing itself out because of Sharpe's inability to die.
28	** From the series: "X, now that's soldiering" or "X. That's soldiering."
29	* MoralEventHorizon: Hakeswill murdering [[spoiler: [=McCandless=] after the Battle of Assaye was over.]] All so he could 'arrest' Sharpe.
30	* {{Narm}}: Sharpe's rescue of La Marquesa from a convent in ''Sharpe's Honour'' is supposed to be daring and dramatic, but it's hard not to laugh at him getting pelted with loaves of bread and plucked chickens by a pack of angry nuns and unable to fight back because of his [[WouldntHitAGirl chivalrous nature]].
31	* NewerThanTheyThink: While 'Over The Hills And Far Away' is a legitimate traditional song and the chorus originated in 1706, the verses sung in the show were written by John Tams.
32	* RetroactiveRecognition: To give a few:
33	** Creator/DanielCraig is Lt. Berry in ''[[Recap/SharpeS1E2SharpesEagle Sharpe's Eagle]]''.
34	** Creator/EmilyMortimer as "Lass" in ''Sharpe's Sword.''
35	** Creator/MarkStrong is Colonel Brand in ''[[Recap/SharpeS4E3SharpesMission Sharpe's Mission]]''.
36	** Creator/PaulBettany is the Prince of Orange in ''Sharpe's Waterloo.''
37	** Creator/AliceKrige (best known as the Borg Queen from ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'') as La Marquesa.
38	** Creator/AlexisDenisof is Lord John Rossendale.
39	** Creator/ElizabethHurley is Isabella, Lady Farthingdale in "Sharpe's Enemy".
40	** Edward Atterton ([[Series/{{Firefly}} Atherton Wing, to most tropers]]) plays Peter D'Alembord.
41	** Creator/PhilipGlenister, in his pre-[[Series/LifeOnMars2006 Gene Hunt]] days, plays labour organizer Matthew Truman.
42	** Creator/JamesPurefoy is Jack Spears.
43	** And, of course, Creator/SeanBean himself, whose only role of real note at the time filming started was IRA terrorist Sean Miller in ''Film/PatriotGames''
44	* SignatureScene: Sir Arthur Wellesley's ''brutal'' [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech dressing down]] of Sir Henry Simmerson in ''Sharpe's Eagle'' is a commonly quoted scene.
45	* TearJerker:
46	** After Hakeswill [[spoiler:kills Theresa]] in ''[[Recap/SharpeS2E2SharpesEnemy Sharpe's Enemy]]'':
47	--> "You told me you didn't speak French"
48	--> "I lied. My wife taught me. She taught me many things. Above all, how to say goodbye."
49	** ''[[Recap/SharpeS3E2SharpesBattle Sharpe's Battle]]'' with the [[spoiler: death of young Perkins, after he is stabbed in the stomach by a supposed ally]]. Begging first for a tune from Dan, then for [[IWantMyMommy his mum]] and finally apologising to Sergeant Harper for not being a good enough soldier and letting him down. All whilst his hardened comrades break into tears around him. Harper desperately tries to comfort him:
50	--> "Your mother's with you, lad! Mothers never leave ya!"
51	** Near the end of ''[[Recap/SharpeS5E3SharpesWaterloo Sharpe's Waterloo]]'', Harris and Hagman in the farmyard. [[spoiler: Harris spots that Hagman is about to be shot and shouts his name, but isn't quite fast enough to stop it happening... and then is himself bayoneted in the back. He ''crawls'' the few yards to grab his friend's hand and then dies]]. This is topped off by [[spoiler:Sharpe audibly choking up on learning of their deaths]].
52	--->"They were ''my'' men! ''I'' [[CallBack chose them!]]"
53	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Cornwell himself has stated that he regrets [[spoiler: killing off Hakeswill, as he's had difficulty coming up with an equally depraved and personal arch-nemesis for Sharpe]].

Context YMMV / Sharpe