Charles Gerald Wood FRSL[1] (6 August 1932 – 1 February 2020) was an English playwright and scriptwriter for radio, television, and film.
His parents worked as actors in repertory and fit-ups (travelling theatrical groups) mainly in the north of England and Wales and had no fixed place of abode.
Drill Pig (1964) was a black comedy about a young man who joins the army to escape his civilian life and his wife and her parents.
Don't Make Me Laugh exposed military and civilian attitudes through the home life of a sergeant, his wife and their lodger.
Wood wrote the script for the film of The Charge Of The Light Brigade (1968) after John Osborne had been sued for plagiarising Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why.
[5] H, Being Monologues at Front of Burning Cities (1969) was a historical pageant about Sir Henry Havelock's military campaign during the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Wood wrote an episode of Kavanagh QC ("Mute of Malice", 1997) about an army chaplain traumatised by his experiences in Bosnia.
Last Summer By The Seaside (1964) was a documentary / cinema verite commentary about the English at play on the beach written and narrated by Charles Wood about his family on their annual holiday visit to his parents on the Isle of Wight.
A Bit of a Holiday (1969) which starred George Cole as the writer Gordon Maple rewriting a historical screenplay in Rome was inspired by the filming of The Adventures of Gerard.
The first of these was also perhaps the strangest: The Emergence of Anthony Purdy Esq, Farmer’s Labourer was an experimental piece starring Freddie Jones and Judy Matheson, about which little else is known, bar that it was made by Harlech, the ITV company for the South Wales and Western England region, and was ITV’s drama entry at the Monte Carlo TV festival.
It was not widely networked, which is perhaps unsurprising in light of the comment by The Guardian’s critic Nancy Banks-Smith that it was “completely incomprehensible to anyone east of Somerset”.
[8] Wood had submitted Dingo to the National Theatre Company, but the Chamberlain's rejection of licence meant it could not be performed there, so Bristol Arts Centre staged the play under club membership conditions to circumvent censorship.
(1965) and How I Won the War (1967), adapted from the Patrick Ryan novel and featuring some of the material from Wood’s play Dingo.
Inspired by stories by Yuri Krotkov, Wood wrote for Lester a script about the catastrophes suffered by a Russian actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to Stalin, but when financing fell through it was performed as Red Star by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984.
Jingo, subtitled A Farce of War, is set during the last days of British control of Singapore before the humiliating surrender to the Japanese.