DVDs

Sharpe's Company
Sharpe's Enemy

Full review of Sharpe's Company
Full review of Sharpe's Enemy
Buy Region 1 Sharpe's Company
Buy Region 1 Sharpe's Enemy

By Richard Moore

I was very interested to see Sharpe's Company on DVD to see how the transfer of the early series was handled.

Much to my pleasure both Sharpe's Company and Sharpe's Enemy are very nice indeed, although both have a few technical glitches. These, however, will only annoy the truly finickity and shouldn't stop anyone adding these to the collection.

The video transfer of Company does have an occasional problem with being a bit soft but, considering the age of the original, is remarkably good.

The sharpeness is usually very good and the colours are terrific. There is plenty of detail in shadow areas and in the scenes of the night attacks on Badajoz suffer from little grain.

Enemy has no problems from softness and in fact the major problem looks like it was caused by someone being a tad overzealous in the other direction. There are a couple of really bad examples of edge enhancement - the worst being where Teresa is surrounded by a thick white edge against that stands out against a very blue sky.

Still, close-ups of officers' uniforms and chest-fulls of braid are handled to perfection with no sign of shimmering.

Sharpe's Company and Sharpe's Enemy are out in a good-value double DVD pack available for both region 1 and region 2.

Comments: Again I'd have liked to have seen more extras than the offered photo gallery and fact file, but then the additional disc space needed may have hurt the transfer quality so maybe I should just be quiet.

Conclusion: Another terrific set for Sharpe devotees.