SHARPE 1993 Season 1 - Episode 1 Sharpe's Rifles

Based on Bernard Cornwell's 1988 novel of the same name. It began a long series of successful and critically acclaimed television adaptations of the novels. Filming took place in the Crimea, Portugal and England, during which Paul McGann who was the original actor cast for the role of Richard Sharpe, broke his leg and was quickly replaced with Sean Bean. The drama tells the story of Richard Sharpe, an ambitious and hardened soldier from Yorkshire. In 1809, Sergeant Richard Sharpe of the 95th Rifles saves Sir Arthur Wellesley, the commander of the British army fighting the French in Portugal, from three French cavalrymen. Wellesley rewards Sharpe with a field commission to lieutenant. Wellesley has no money to pay his men, so he has arranged for a loan from the Rothschild family. James Rothschild has set out from Vienna with a badly needed bank draft, but has gone missing in the Spanish mountains. A company of the 95th, under Major Dunnett, is being sent to search for him, and Sharpe's first assignment is to command the Chosen Men, a handful of sharpshooters attached to the company. Sharpe, still uncomfortable in his new rank, does not make a good impression on his men, particularly their unofficial leader, Irishman Patrick Harper.