Sharpe’s Rifles: Actor spills the beans on the making of a TV blockbuster set in Portugal and Spain
If you think today is a miserable time to be British (given Brexit and its associated economic and political chaos), spare a thought for those Britons who lived through the early 1990s. A severe recession inflicted misery on millions. Interest rates and unemployment soared while house prices and incomes crashed.
Unsurprisingly, a weary public sought respite in front of their TV sets with escapist series such as “Sharpe’s Rifles”, set in Portugal and Spain, particularly popular.
First broadcast in 1993, the show featured a tough Yorkshire soldier called Richard Sharpe (played by a then relatively unknown Sean Bean), who battled and eventually overcame assorted rogues and scoundrels, many on his own side, during the Peninsular War that raged across Portugal and Spain in the early 19th century.
Chaos and corruption
Every week, 10 million Britons tuned into “Sharpe”, and the series also become immensely popular across the globe. Yet, the story of the making of the show, much of it filmed in the Ukraine, is as dramatic as the battles in which the eponymous hero fought, according to the actor Jason Salkey. He played one of the most prominent characters, Rifleman Harris, who memorably introduced himself to Sharpe as “a courtier to my lord Bacchus and an unremitting debtor”.
I recently talked to Jason about a book he is writing entitled Crimea with Love. It documents “the mishaps, blunders, incompetence and downright corruption that made Sharpe’s Rifles go down in British television and film production folklore for its tales of hardship, disaster and chaos only rivalled by the Ukraine itself.”
Jason explains: “Initially, Paul McGann was given the lead role of Richard Sharpe, but Paul hurt his knee playing football six days into the shoot sending the production into chaos, which ended only after Sean Bean came in to save the day.
“The incompetence lay in the decision to take a Western film unit into the disarray of the newly-splintered Soviet Union and to link up with Russian co-producers, adept at overcharging the British producers and underpaying the local crew. But the Soviet Union was run like a mafia; corrupt to the bone, so it was the only way they knew how to operate!”
However, as Jason details in the book, which he is crowdfunding (see link at the end of the article), Sharpe changed his life: “I met my wife, who was on the show as an interpreter, and we even managed to conceive our very own Sharpe baby while we were on ‘active duty’. In addition, playing the part of Rifleman Harris allowed me to make a small contribution to a legendary TV series, which in turn has given me a new career catering to the questions of Sharpe fans worldwide.”
Sharp shooters
Since taking part in the series, Jason has become a fan of the riflemen and the era. The men who belonged to the Rifle brigade that features in the TV series were the elite troops of their era. They were armed with Baker rifles, which were far more accurate and had a much greater range than the muskets carried by most soldiers of the time.
Jason says of the riflemen: “A hardy breed, they would have no problem dealing with post-Soviet Ukraine. Being an absolute newcomer to everything Napoleonic before I got the role on Sharpe, I got my introduction when reading ‘The Recollections of Rifleman Harris’, a memoir written by a real rifleman called Benjamin Harris.
“I was aghast at the horrors faced by a foot soldier of the 95th on campaign in the Peninsula. The Napoleonic campaigns represent the true First World War. The conflict spanned the globe and involved numerous countries.
“The Napoleonic era was also a time of great change coming just before the dawning of the industrial revolution. I’ve always liked the anecdote that Robert Stephenson sought advice from rifle maker Ezekiel Baker on how to bore metal for the cylinders used in his ‘Rocket’. That, of course, led to the invention of the steam train.”
Finally, I asked Jason when he realised that Sharpe was going to be a success.
Jason responded that he knew the show had the potential to be a hit after he had read some of the Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell. He adds: “I thought Sharpe was special, almost a Bond-like hero capable of amazing feats of heroism. Did I realise the show might have the longevity it’s experienced? Not really, but actors always hope they are in on something that will stand the test of time and is enjoyed across generations, so I suppose the thought was somewhere in the back of my mind.”
Jason hopes to have his book released by late November saying he has written most of the first draft. People can still support the project by purchasing their hardback copy ‘up-front’ before publication.
You can also catch the entire series of “Sharpe” on Amazon Prime in Portugal and the audiobook of the memoirs of real Rifleman Harris, voiced by Jason, is available via his website below.
https://www.portugalresident.com/2019/07/05/sharpes-rifles-actor-spills-the-beans-on-the-making-of-a-tv-blockbuster-set-in-portugal-and-spain/
