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Windswept
On Pacific time
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Moderator's Pub
 
2010-03-31, 22:08

I used to *really* like the Sharpe episodes that played on PBS. There was another episode this past Sunday night on Masterpiece Classic. I think it was called "Sharpe's Challenge," and it was 2 hours. (Sharpe was a British rifleman in 1803 during the Napoleonic Wars.)

I can't figure out why I wasn't that crazy about this episode, but I wasn't. Maybe it was partly that the setting (supposedly India in 1814) had so much dust always being kicked up by horses hooves or just by soldiers walking through, so that the cinematography took a real beating.

The author of the book version (Bernard Cornwell) is really quite exceptional and writes great stories, but this particular screenplay seemed to miss the mark with regard to plot and suspense. It was strange.

Plus, I had to struggle to make out what virtually *all* the people were saying. Sharpe himself (Sean Bean) spoke with an accent that was often hard to understand; the French soldiers and the Indian characters all spoke English with accents that were sometimes very difficult to make out.

I think the screenplay seemed disjointed, and skipped around from one thing to another without engaging the viewer.

I'm writing all this because, as I said, I was puzzled that I didn't get caught up by a story that I used to like so much, and I'm trying to figure out why.

Anyone else see Sunday's episode? There's another coming up this coming Sunday, and I hope I won't be disappointed again. My expectations will be much lower this time, that's for sure.

About MI-5, I suppose I'll eventually get sick of it, but I've only been watching for a while at this point, and I still get caught up in the tension of the stories.

The storylines don't seem all that unreal to me, but maybe that's because they take place in a location and (spy) culture with which I'm not all that familiar, so any unreality I sense I probably chalk up to the fact that it's a foreign locale/culture to begin with, so it doesn't bother me as much as it might.
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