Sharpe's Challenge

Infobox Television Film
bgcolour =
name = Sharpe's Challenge


caption =
format = Military drama
runtime = 138 min.
creator =
director = Tom Clegg
producer = Malcolm Craddock
Muir Sutherland
writer = Bernard Cornwell (novel series)
Russell Lewis
starring = Sean Bean
Daragh O'Malley
Toby Stephens
Padma Lakshmi
Lucy Brown
music = Dominic Muldowney
John Tams
country = UK
language = English
network =
released = 2006
first_aired =
last_aired =
num_episodes =
preceded_by = Sharpe's Waterloo
followed_by = Sharpe's Peril
website =
imdb_id = 0480002
tv_com_id =
amg_id =

"Sharpe's Challenge" is a British television drama, part of a series that follows the career of Richard Sharpe (based on the novels of Bernard Cornwell). Here, the former British soldier undertakes one last mission for his former commander, the Duke of Wellington.

Plot

In 1803 India, Sergeant Sharpe (Sean Bean) leads a patrol to an East India Company outpost. He arrives shortly before another supposedly friendly group of soldiers led by Major William Dodd (Toby Stephens). In a treacherous surprise attack, Dodd has his men kill the entire garrison, leaving no one alive, and makes off with the payroll. The wounded Sharpe is left for dead.

Fourteen years later, Sharpe, now a farmer in France, is summoned by the Duke of Wellington (Hugh Fraser) to his London home [Its brief appearance is not as it actually was at this date, but as it was after its 1818–1819 rebuild.] to undertake one more mission for him, to find a man in India. The missing agent was trying to learn the identity of a turncoat officer advising a rebellious Maratha rajah. Sharpe refuses, unwilling to press his luck any further, until he learns that the agent is his old comrade in arms and best friend, Patrick Harper (Daragh O'Malley).

Sharpe sets out for India. On his way to report to General Burroughs (Peter Symonds), he passes a group of soldiers accompanying Celia Burroughs (Lucy Brown), the general's attractive daughter. After a short conversation with her, he rides on ahead. He is soon attacked by marauders, but is rescued by Patrick Harper, who shows up just in time with his signature 7-barrel gun.

But Celia Burroughs' escort had in the meantime also been attacked by none other than William Dodd; she is captured and taken to the fortress of Khande Rao (Karan Panthaky), the nominal leader of the revolt. However, he is not yet of age and is under the influence of a regent, his late father's favourite concubine, Madhuvanthi (Padma Lakshmi), and her lover, now General William Dodd, who plan to kill Rao before he declares his majority.

Sharpe reaches the encampment of General Burroughs, who is preparing to lay siege to the fortress of Ferraghur. The General is lamentably incapacitated by illness, and, worse, command has passed to an old foe of Sharpe's, the cowardly General Sir Henry Simmerson (Michael Cochrane), who has refused to act without orders and reinforcements from Agra. The resourceful Sharpe requests permission to infiltrate the enemy fortress, and Simmerson is only too happy to allow Sharpe to risk his life on a dangerous mission.

Sharpe and Harper, posing as deserters, are welcomed into the fortress by the rebels, where Sharpe makes the acquaintance of former French Colonel Gudin (Aurélien Recoing), a fellow veteran of the Battle of Waterloo two years earlier, who has been hired to train the rebels.

Meanwhile, General Burroughs revives from his illness, dismisses Simmerson from command, and commences the siege of Ferraghur. Sharpe discovers that Dodd has laid a trap for the British: they will attempt their breach of the wall just where he has mined it with barrels of gunpowder.

In a skirmish, some British soldiers are captured, among them Sergeant Shadrach Bickerstaff (Peter-Hugo Daly), who had clashed with Sharpe earlier. To avoid torture and execution by the rebels, Bickerstaff betrays Sharpe. Sharpe and Harper are beaten and imprisoned, but Gudin, disgusted by the barbaric execution of prisoners, helps Sharpe and Harper escape, just as the British launch their assault.

Gudin next attempts to free Celia but is murdered by Bickerstaff. Sharpe and Harper successfully set off the gunpowder mine prematurely, resulting in a huge explosion which kills many defenders. Harper encounters and shoots Bickerstaff, while Sharpe goes off in search of Dodd.

The breach is successful; the fortress has fallen; Dodd prepares to flee. Madhuvanthi attacks him with a knife when she learns that he is abandoning her; he murders her. Sharpe finds him and takes his life, thus avenging the Redcoats whom Dodd had betrayed so many years ago.

Khande Rao, captured alive, is allowed to keep his throne after he signs a peace treaty, much to Sharpe's disgust. Celia is reunited with her father. Their mission accomplished, Sharpe and Harper ride off.

Connections to Cornwell novels

Though the screenplay is set some 15 years later, it can be seen as an amalgam of the trio of Cornwell novels "Sharpe's Tiger", "Sharpe's Triumph", and "Sharpe's Fortress", set in India between 1799 and 1803.

* In "Sharpe's Tiger", Sharpe (then a private) infiltrates an Indian fortress, pretending to be a deserter along with Lieutenant Lawford, instead of Patrick Harper (whom he would not yet have met). He is ordered to do so on the initiative of Colonel Wellesley, while in the screenplay, he is persuaded to go to India by the same man (though with a much higher rank).

* In "Sharpe's Tiger", Sharpe and Lawford infiltrate the fortress of Seringapatam shortly before it is laid to siege, with the intention of saving Colonel Hector McCandless, head of the East India Company's intelligence service.

* To test his loyalty, Sharpe is told to shoot McCandless with a musket at point-blank range, which he does, knowing that the powder he is using will not fire. In the screenplay, Sharpe is supposed to shoot Harper, with similar results, although here he knows the gunpowder is fake by the taste.

* Colonel Gudin appears in both screenplay and novel as a French officer training Indian soldiers. However, in the novel, he has been sanctioned by Napoleon Bonaparte's government to aid the Sultan of Mysore in fighting off the British. In the novel, as in the film, he appears honourable, often opposing the Sultan's wishes to inflict capital punishments on prisoners.

* The role of Sergeant Shadrach Bickerstaff in the screenplay is taken from that of Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill in the novels. In "Sharpe's Tiger", Private Sharpe is the target of Hakeswill's bullying. The scene early on in the screenplay where Sharpe provokes Bickerstaff to fight him mimicks a scene at the start of the book in which Hakeswill goads Sharpe into striking him, engineering a punishment of 2000 lashes for Sharpe, and leading up to the events of the rest of the book. Bickerstaff appears to be a character who dies before the events of "Sharpe's Tiger", and whose widow is Sharpe's love interest. The plotline in the screenplay where Bickerstaff effectively deserts to the enemy and becomes Dodd's right hand man is reminiscent of Hakeswill's actions in "Sharpe's Fortress".

* The use of "jettis" (Indian strongmen) is borrowed from the novels, where they carry out similar acts of violence on the command of the Sultan, such as the execution by pounding nails into prisoners' heads using only their bare hands, as depicted in the screenplay.

* The character of William Dodd is described in "Sharpe's Triumph" and "Sharpe's Fortress". Dodd's introduction to Sharpe and his death at Sharpe's hands in the screenplay are reminiscent of those in the two respective novels.

Notes

External links

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* [http://www.sharpefilm.com/home/ Sharpe's Challenge at SharpeFilm.com]