Sharpe's Challenge DVD > Reviews > No Challenge for Sharpe

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Outstanding
Soundtrack	Outstanding

Advantages:	Superbly shot, great casting
Disadvantages:	none really !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I have to admit, i was absolutely gutted when this came out. I'd just spent a small fortune on the boxset.
On the other hand, I was chuffed to bits, sharpe was back!
It'd been a long time since Sean Bean had donned that uniform, and it shows - though it fits in perfectly with the storyline.
The storyline is loosely based on the book "Sharpes Fortress" - the last of the Sharpe in India series. In Challenge, Sharpe returns to India as a retired colonel to search for Harper - and along the way gets himself involved with the Incompetent Simmerson (the most hated of sharpes enemies!) and ends up posing as a redcoat deserter, to rescue the ailing generals daughter and save the day - though things go terribly wrong when a captured sargeant gives Sharpe and Harper away - and as always with Sharpe, death, mass explosions and screaming charges ensue!

Despite the fact that over a decade had passed between waterloo and challenge, Sean Bean and Daragh O Malley work together as well as always, complete with their usual humour, and bizarre dignity.

All in all, I was very impressed with the DVD - the extra's aren't great, but you still need to watch them to see whats going on behind the scenes, and its a great overview of how the cast view sharpe.

Technically, it's a very well shot episode (I won't call it a film, its a two parter!), with the set and pyrotechnic effects being fantastically done, the cast are, as always, accurately dressed and armed, and the scenery is uncannily accurate, which you come to expect from this series.

News is, theres another new one in the pipeline, and I'm looking forward to it in the hopes it's up to the same standard