Sharpe's Challenge (ITV1); Doctor Who (BBC1): Who would you rather have on your side in a tight spot - time-travelling Doctor Who or Napoleonic Wars hero Richard Sharpe?
On the evidence of the pair's adventures at the weekend, give me the Doctor every time.
There's nowt wrong with Sharpe, as played by Sean Bean in broad Yorkshire strokes, as long as he's astride his horse and charging into battle.
I've never been a follower of Sharpe and his return, after an eight-year gap, did nothing to convert me to his cause. This is an unrelentingly old-fashioned adventure yarn with a dashing hero, damsels in distress, much fighting and Toby Stephens snarling magnificently as a turncoat British officer.
Sharpe, now a farmer, is recruited by Wellington because "there's a young tiger on the loose in India". This is the Iron Duke's way of saying the natives are restless with a maharaja threatening British interests.
The Indian locations means that the scenery is spectacular which makes up for dialogue consisting of lines such as "poor bloody place for a tea party" and "next time you want to take a man unawares, put your horses down wind".
One prisoner has a nail driven into his head, forts are attacked, troops massacred and Bean attempts - and fails - to look 25 years younger in a flashback.
The story concludes tonight and I fear for the colonel's captured daughter Celia, who's clearly angling to be a Page Three model. Having had her bodice ripped by the maharaja's men, she takes to lying about in the bath with her breasts bobbing merrily on the top of the water.
"I hardly think it proper for you to be alone in a woman's quarters," someone says. Exactly, a man should always have company when exploring a woman's quarters.
If Sharpe's Challenge was slow and dull, Doctor Who was the exact opposite - another pacy, funny, exciting, scary rollercoaster ride involving Queen Victoria, a werewolf, bald kung fu fighting monks and a naked Billie Piper.
Only joking about the last bit. Her companion, Rose, was garbed in appropriate 1979 gear, T-shirt and short skirt, for a trip to see Ian Dury and the Blockheads at the Top Rank, Sheffield. Unfortunately the Doctor's time coordinates were out and the Tardis landed in 1879.
The pair met up with Queen Victoria in Scotland and the monarch was alarmed by Rose's lack of clothing. "Her nakedness" as she called it. I regret to say the time travellers failed to show due respect to the monarch (played by Pauline Collins having the time of her life). "Pardon me, your majesty, you will have to leg it out a window," the Doctor told her as the hairy beast - no, not Prince Albert - pursued them through the old dark house.
The monks were determined to keep everyone in the house during the full moon so the werewolf could do what werewolves do - rip people to shreds. This being before the watershed, we were spared the sight, if not the sound, of the grisly deaths.
And why, you may well be wondering, didn't the Doctor realise that something was wrong when the royal party arrived at the house and found all those monks? "They're bald, athletic, your wife was away - I thought you were just happy," the Doctor told the man of the house.
Published: 24/04/2006
