YMMV / Sharpe S4 E3 Sharpe's Mission

• Complete Monster: 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 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 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 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 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.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Major Septimus Pyecroft has proven quite popular with subsequent viewers, and there's disappointment that he couldn't be in more than one episode since this episode's story is unique to the tv series.
• Retroactive Recognition: Mark Strong as Col. Brand.