by OLIVER WAKE

An overview of Charles Wood’s television career

Charles Wood is a dramatist whose work spans the mediums of stage, television and film. The subjects and styles of his television work vary enormously, with comedy rubbing shoulders with harrowing drama, but stories about war, soldiers and militarism in general, all of which hold a particular fascination for him, recur. Although Wood is far from being simply a ‘war’ writer, it is perhaps his stories of soldiers and armed conflict in which his individual voice is most clear.

by OLIVER WAKE<\/h4>\n

An overview of Charles Wood’s television career<\/em><\/p>\n

Charles Wood is a dramatist whose work spans the mediums of stage, television and film. The subjects and styles of his television work vary enormously, with comedy rubbing shoulders with harrowing drama, but stories about war, soldiers and militarism in general, all of which hold a particular fascination for him, recur. Although Wood is far from being simply a \u2018war\u2019 writer, it is perhaps his stories of soldiers and armed conflict in which his individual voice is most clear.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wood was born into a theatrical family in 1932. He hated acting, which was a duty expected of him in the family business, and the insecurity of the lifestyle. He was more at home as a scenic designer and painter. He left the family theatre for art school but, according to his wife, lost his grant and recognised that he wasn\u2019t moving towards a shining future as an artist.^{1<\/a><\/sup> In 1950 he joined the army \u201cto get some sort of order into my life [\u2026 and] because I liked the idea of being a soldier\u201d.2<\/a><\/sup> He\u2019d been fascinated by the Second World War as a child and thought it inevitable he would end up in the armed forces (National Service was active at the time, so by joining voluntarily he was only pre-empting his automatic call-up later). Having joined (choosing the 17th\/21st Lancer armoured regiment), Wood decided he wanted to become a general, and as such needed to win an officer\u2019s commission. He failed the selection board and instead went on to reach the rank of corporal. He spent much of his army career as a tank radio operator with the British army of the Rhine, but later became an instructor back in Britain. He left the army after his five contracted years. \u201cI got tired\u201d, he later recalled.3<\/a><\/sup> Even so, he remained a reservist for seven years.<\/p>\n}

Wood\u2019s army experience left him a pacifist for a number of years. By 1975 he had modified his stance slightly, stating: \u201cI admire the amateur soldier, fighting to defend his home: but I can\u2019t admire what I was, someone hired to do the job \u2013 a pretty nasty job when it reaches its ultimate conclusion. I just dislike intensely the trade of killing.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> His experiences in the army, particularly his close association with long-serving professional soldiers, and these ethical concerns, informed much of his later dramatic writing. More recently he has articulated his drive to examine not just the trade of soldiering but also the grounds on which they deployed:<\/p>\n

What we must understand is precisely what it means when somebody says we are now going to go to war with another country, because that war may be considered just but as soon as the first shot is fired it becomes unjust. That is the character of war. As soon as you start killing justice goes out the window.5<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After leaving the army, Wood worked in a missile manufacturing plant for a year, then spent 18 months as a commercial artist in Canada before returning to Britain. In 1957 he joined Joan Littlewood\u2019s influential Stratford East theatre as a stage manager. He went on to tour repertory theatres at Colwyn Bay, Worthing and Wimbledon. The pay was poor so that he took freelance work as a scenic artist and later went to work for the Evening Post<\/em> in Bristol. He was inspired to write while sat in front of the television one night, having suddenly recognized that there was a market and \u201cgood money\u201d to be made in television.6<\/a><\/sup> From his time at his parents\u2019 repertory theatres, where he would see each play in nine performances in the space of a week, Wood felt he had learned something of what makes a play work.7<\/a><\/sup> He directed into his early work his fears about rearmament and his feeling that \u201cwe were not working as hard as we should towards peace\u201d.8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Wood wrote his first play, Prisoner and Escort<\/em>, in 1959, partly in reaction to the popular ITV sitcom The Army Game<\/em> (1957-61), which made absurd comedy from the lives of reluctant National Service recruits.9<\/a><\/sup> Wood\u2019s approach to a similar subject was to be more incisive and disturbing, if not necessarily any less farcical. The play was about a young private soldier being escorted by a bullying corporal on a train journey to his courts martial. The soldier was guilty of urinating on the boots of a visiting German officer during parade, motivated by the deaths of family members during the world wars. Into this situation comes a permissive young woman, provoking sexual and racial jealousies amongst the soldiers. Wood aimed to sell the play to television but it was first produced for BBC radio in 1962 and was subsequently staged in the theatre the following year as part of Cockade<\/em>, a trio of short plays by Wood about militarism.10<\/a><\/sup> We\u2019ll return to Prisoner and Escort<\/em> later, as it was beaten to realisation on television by two new plays by Wood.<\/p>\n

Wood\u2019s first broadcast television play was 1961\u2019s Traitor in a Steel Helmet<\/em>, about the clash of two soldiers, one a sensitive private, the other a gruff sergeant, with a recluse named \u2018Sailor\u2019, who they find living in the cellar of a derelict farmhouse on a tank training ground.11<\/a><\/sup> Ultimately, Sailor is accidentally killed during a live firing exercise. \u201cThe moral is plain -\u201d, wrote The Times<\/em>, \u201cno one can contract out of society; the helmet itself is a sign that its wearer is under authority, and modern warfare respects no man\u2019s principles.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup> The Guardian<\/em> called it \u201cturgid symbolism\u201d and neither paper concluded in the play\u2019s favour.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In his review, the Daily Mirror<\/em>\u2019s Richard Sear noted Wood\u2019s \u201cauthentic Army jargon, sprinkled with thinly disguised four letter words.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> This type of convincing dialogue characterises Wood\u2019s military dramas. After five years in the army, he was naturally well acquainted with the vocabulary of soldiers, and had insight into their thought processes. \u201cI understand the motives and reasons why soldiers do things\u201d, he reported in 1975, also suggesting that not only did he like soldiers but that \u201cI still regard myself as one in some ways.\u201d15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Wood\u2019s next broadcast play, Not at All<\/em> (1962), was a very different piece.16<\/a><\/sup> Recorded in the BBC\u2019s new Bristol studios, where Wood was then working as a scenic artist, it was a comedy drama about two inhibited advertising artists who go on holiday to the Isle of Wight in the hope of finding romance. The Observer<\/em>\u2019s Maurice Richardson found it amusing and admired Wood\u2019s characterisation, but noted a \u201cdiscrepancy between the dreamlike parts of the script and the realistic ones.\u201d He also observed that the fantasy elements were \u201cof sudden not un-Pinterish menace.\u201d17<\/a><\/sup> This likening of Wood\u2019s style to that of Harold Pinter, or the other proponents of the \u2018comedy of menace\u2019 school of drama, is one that recurred in these early stages of his writing career.<\/p>\n

1964 saw Prisoner and Escort<\/em> finally make it to television courtesy of ABC\u2019s popular Armchair Theatre<\/em> drama anthology.18<\/a><\/sup> The play was given a startlingly unusual production by director Philip Saville, who eschewed conventional sets for a series of scaffolding boxes and moving screens within the otherwise bare studio and used sound and lighting effects to suggest locations. Calling it \u201cgrotesque\u201d and \u201chorrific\u201d, the British army\u2019s public relations director complained that Prisoner and Escort<\/em>, and other plays like it, were costing the army new recruits.19<\/a><\/sup> Years later, Wood acknowledged that his work tended to do the army a disservice: \u201cevery time I write a play the army takes a caning. It isn\u2019t terribly fair. But at the same time it\u2019s honest: and they\u2019re tough enough to take it.\u201d20<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Wood\u2019s next play, Drill Pig<\/em> (1964), was another study of the military mentality.21<\/a><\/sup> The Observer<\/em> suggested it would cause a greater stir than Prisoner and Escort<\/em>, reporting that the Independent Television Authority had \u201cinspected\u201d it in advance of transmission and \u201cfound it fit for viewer consumption \u2013 just.\u201d22<\/a><\/sup> Drill Pig<\/em> was a black comedy about a young man, Bates, who joins the army desperate to escape his sugar-coated civilian life with his stupid wife and her mollycoddling parents. He comes to believe he is a born soldier and that anything is preferable to having to live outside of the army. The Times<\/em> wrote that \u201cThe little parable was developed in a teasing, elliptical way by Mr. Wood: the contrasted languages of the two different worlds Bates lives in were evoked with particular skill and vividness, and the complicated structure, with a visible narrator drifting in and out of the action \u2026 was remarkably effective\u201d.23<\/a><\/sup> Other critics were less impressed.<\/p>\n

Wood ended 1964 rather less controversially, writing and narrating a documentary for the BBC called Last Summer by the Seaside<\/em>, about the more unusual seaside events of the previous summer, including the Mods vs Rockers riots.24<\/a><\/sup> For much of the rest of the 1960s Wood\u2019s efforts were in stage and film work. He had particular success in the theatre with his blistering myth-busting Second World War play Dingo<\/em>, which debuted in 1967, having been planned for a number of years, and H<\/em>, in 1967, about General Havelock\u2019s suppression of the Indian mutiny in 1857. Wood also provided scripts for a series of feature films released during the decade, including the Beatles vehicle Help!<\/em> (1965) and war subjects How I Won the War<\/em> (1967), The Long Day\u2019s Dying<\/em> (1968) and The Charge of the Light Brigade<\/em> (1968).<\/p>\n

Although concentrating his efforts outside of television during the late 1960s, Wood did contribute Drums Along the Avon<\/em> to the BBC\u2019s Wednesday Play<\/em> in 1967.25<\/a><\/sup> Directed by James MacTaggart, it was a perplexing montage of characters, situations and documentary elements drawn from Bristol\u2019s immigrant communities, with little in the way of structure or narrative. Most famously, amongst its comedic sequences it featured Leonard Rossiter \u2018blacking up\u2019 and trying to live like a Sikh. Writing in The Guardian<\/em>, Stanley Reynolds called it \u201ca bright, ingenious, entertaining, and sophisticated piece of art.\u201d26<\/a><\/sup> Wood also wrote A Bit of a Holiday<\/em>, for The Root of all Evil?<\/em> (1968-69) anthology in 1969, which we\u2019ll return to later.27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

While Wood remained active in the theatre, a string of television dramas followed in the 1970s. The first of these was also perhaps the strangest. The Emergence of Anthony Purdy Esq, Farmer\u2019s Labourer<\/em> was an experimental piece starring Freddie Jones, 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\u2019s drama entry at the Monte Carlo TV festival.28<\/a><\/sup> It was not widely networked, which is perhaps unsurprising in light of the comment by The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s critic Nancy Banks-Smith that it was \u201ccompletely incomprehensible to anyone east of Somerset\u201d.29<\/a><\/sup> In 1971 Wood was reported to be the \u201coriginator and editor\u201d of HTV children\u2019s serial The Pretenders<\/em> (1972), about the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, which he wrote with various writers from the west of England.30<\/a><\/sup> However, his name doesn\u2019t appear on the programme\u2019s credits so his true level of involvement remains unclear.<\/p>\n

Between 1969 and 1974, Wood wrote four TV plays which form a loose quartet, each dealing with the comedy of writers, their work and family. The previously mentioned A Bit of a Holiday<\/em> was about playwright Gordon Maple, played by George Cole, who is in Rome with his wife Mabel (Gwen Watford), to work on a screenplay for an historical epic, and his struggle to deal with the ever move tasteless suggestions of his producer. Banks-Smith admired Wood\u2019s \u201cextremely rich and funny script\u201d.31<\/a><\/sup> The Maples returned in A Bit of an Adventure<\/em> (1974), again played by Cole and Watford, to deal with a visiting French film director insistent that Gordon will work with him.32<\/a><\/sup> \u201cIt was not a brilliant play\u201d, wrote Hazel Holt in The Stage and Television Today<\/em>, \u201cbut there was brilliance in it.\u201d33<\/a><\/sup> Holt admired the comedic performances and Wood\u2019s \u201cinvoluted and oblique\u201d dialogue.34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Between these two plays, another pair was produced using similar characters and scenarios. None of the same characters recurred, although George Cole did appear as another writer in the first. A Bit of Family Feeling<\/em> (1971) was a comedy about playwright Peter, his wife, and a visit from his parents.35<\/a><\/sup> Writing in The Times<\/em>, Stanley Reynolds reported that the play featured \u201csome of the funniest, clearest, and crispest dialogue we have heard on television for a long time.\u201d36<\/a><\/sup> In A Bit of Vision<\/em> (1972), mid-life crises and marital discord erupt when writer Stuart and his wife visit and old friend and his family in the country.37<\/a><\/sup> The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s Peter Fiddick found it \u201ca splendidly inconsequential bag of chat, jokes behaviour, farce and theatrical tricks\u201d.38<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Clearly Wood had an affinity for stories featuring writers as characters and felt there was more comedy mileage in Gordon and Mable Maple, as played by Cole and Watford. They gained their own comedy series, Don\u2019t Forget to Write!<\/em> (1977-79), this time on the BBC, which ran for two series. It had a large autobiographical element, with Gordon\u2019s struggles being Wood\u2019s reaction to the frustration, rage and boredom of being a prolific writer who saw little of his work produced.39<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Death or Glory Boy<\/em> (1974) was a trilogy of semi-autobiographical television plays about an enthusiastic young army recruit in the writer\u2019s old regiment in 1950.40<\/a><\/sup> Wood\u2019s protagonist joins up and finds himself the only enthusiastic recruit amongst a squad of National Servicemen. He strives for an officer\u2019s commission, despite his lack of a public school education and the reaction of his fellow recruits. The Stage and Television Today<\/em>\u2019s Patrick Campbell was decidedly unimpressed with the first in the trilogy, finding it \u201cpredictable\u201d and \u201cinfinitely boring.\u201d41<\/a><\/sup> The same year saw his teleplay M\u00fctzen Ab!<\/em>, which tackled the unusual subject of a Nazi-hunters\u2019 party.42<\/a><\/sup> The Nazi-hunters are celebrating the discovery of a particular war criminal in South America, only to learn of a rival candidate in Munich.<\/p>\n

Wood moved away from his military preoccupation for a period during the late-1970s and early-1980s, scripting a diverse selection of television and theatre plays. Do As I Say<\/em> (1977), a BBC Play for Today<\/em> (1970-84), was an extremely black comedy about the callousness and self-interest of people\u2019s reactions to the rape of a suburban housewife.43<\/a><\/sup> When Daphne (Angela Down) is raped in her home, she finds her neighbours are only interested in their own families and the effect of the crime on property prices if it becomes known. One neighbour says: \u201cIt appears to have been the nicest rape anyone has ever experienced\u201d. Unsurprisingly, the BBC received complaints. There was also disquiet within the Corporation itself about the explicitness of the rape scene and the play’s use of strong language, with the matter discussed by the Board of Governors and the Board of Management.44<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Named after a flower, Love-Lies-Bleeding<\/em> (1977) was a play was about the dinner party hosted by a trendy architect and his wife as part of a dining club.45<\/a><\/sup> For their star guest they invite a right-wing political leader, resulting in a bloodbath.<\/p>\n

1983\u2019s Red Monarch<\/em>, a film for Channel 4 directed by Jack Gold, was written by Wood from the satirical short stories of Russian writer and ex-KGB agent Yuri Krotkov.46<\/a><\/sup> It was a farcical black comedy about the later years of Stalin\u2019s life. Both Colin Blakely and David Suchet played their respective roles of Stalin and his chief henchman Beria in Irish accents. Wood reported that \u201cStalin and Beria were both Georgians and we decided we needed a different accent to put that across. Colin is Irish so we stuck with that.\u201d47<\/a><\/sup> Philip French wrote in The Observer<\/em> that \u201cSadly, this ambitious film doesn\u2019t come off \u2013 the jokes are not sufficiently pointed, the political insights lack precision.\u201d48<\/a><\/sup> That seems fair, with the film feeling overlong and its comedy more broad than satirical.<\/p>\n

Wood was no stranger to contentious subjects but his 1988 BBC drama Tumbledown<\/em> proved to be explosive.49<\/a><\/sup> It was a feature-length filmed drama (indeed, it had started out life some years earlier as a feature film) dramatising the experience of Guards officer Robert Lawrence\u2019s experiences in the Falklands war and afterwards, having been left partially disabled by a sniper\u2019s shot to the head during the assault on Mount Tumbledown<\/em>.50<\/a><\/sup> It was Lawrence\u2019s contention that the enemy sniper had been doing his job but that the British establishment had failed to do the same, giving him inadequate care following his injury.<\/p>\n

Tumbledown<\/em> was certainly provocative and powerful drama, with Wood\u2019s insightful script \u2013benefiting from his empathy with Lawrence and with professional soldiers more generally \u2013 sympathetically directed by Richard Eyre. There was no romanticising of combat, with all its brutality apparent. At one point, Lawrence is seen repeatedly stabbing a pleading Argentinean soldier in the face with a broken bayonet. It\u2019s only when Lawrence stops acting like a ruthless professional soldier \u2013 shouting \u201cisn\u2019t this fun?\u201d while waving a rifle in each hand \u2013 that he is shot through the head, a moment left for nearly the final moment of the drama. Earlier sequences showed the aftermath, with Lawrence a low priority casualty given his negligible survival chances, the patronising attitude of army medical staff and later the woeful support provided for his rehabilitation.<\/p>\n

While in production in 1987, the drama ran into its first controversy when the BBC\u2019s postponement of Ian Curteis<\/a>\u2019s The Falklands Play<\/em> was publicly attributed by the author to alleged BBC bias.51<\/a><\/sup> Whereas Curteis\u2019s play broadly supported the Conservative government\u2019s handling of the war, Wood’s did not, and the production of Tumbledown<\/em> alone was alleged in some quarters to confirm the BBC\u2019s suspected bias<\/a>. The Ministry of Defence had already refused any co-operation after the substantial rewrites they had requested were not undertaken.52<\/a><\/sup> Wood told The Times<\/em> that, in writing Tumbledown<\/em>, he\u2019d \u201cavoided any political stance\u201d.53<\/a><\/sup> However, he reported to the Daily Mail<\/em> that \u201cIt has a deep political message that war is futile. The subversive message is think twice before you elect to serve in an army \u2026 Is it right to ask people to die, particularly for something like the Falklands? It didn\u2019t seem right to me \u2026 I want people to start questioning what it is we did \u2026\u201d54<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

A greater storm of protest erupted upon transmission, with much of the comment dividing down political lines. One Conservative MP suggested it was \u201canother example of the BBC stabbing the nation in the back\u201d.55<\/a><\/sup> Another found it \u201cconfused, ugly and foul-mouthed\u201d, though that was surely the point, these being the realities of war that Wood wanted to depict.56<\/a><\/sup> Unsurprisingly, the Opposition were more supportive of the drama\u2019s inherent criticism of the government. Meanwhile, the press went to town. The Daily Mail<\/em> found Tumbledown<\/em> a \u201cfailure\u201d and \u201cghoulish\u201d, lacking \u201cfocus and direction\u201d.57<\/a><\/sup> The Evening Standard<\/em> gave two opinions, one that it was \u201ctechnically superb, harrowing, unsentimental\u201d, the other that it was \u201cvery long and often tedious\u201d.58<\/a><\/sup> The Times<\/em> thought Tumbledown<\/em> \u201cfiercely compelling\u201d.59<\/a><\/sup> The Scotsman<\/em> considered it \u201cmasterly\u201d and \u201csubversive\u201d in the manner of Wilfred Owen\u2019s war poetry.60<\/a><\/sup> It went on to win the Best Single Drama BAFTA award and the Royal Television Society\u2019s Best Single Play award, amongst others.<\/p>\n

The 1980s and \u201890s saw Wood move into series and serialised drama. He dramatised Gerald Durrell\u2019s novel My Family and Other Animals<\/em> (1987) as a ten-part serial and wrote an episode of Inspector Morse<\/em> (1987-2000) based on a Colin Dexter story.61<\/a><\/sup> Wood reported that he\u2019d been so impressed with Inspector Morse<\/em> that he\u2019d asked to write an episode but got into \u201ca terrible mess\u201d, with \u201cclues left over\u201d, and only reached a final draft with the encouragement of producer Kenny McBain.62<\/a><\/sup> One of the few one-off plays he wrote in this period was the mystery drama Dust to Dust<\/em> (1985), about a widow who, obsessed with ritualistic murder, advertises for a gentleman friend.63<\/a><\/sup> Another was England, My England<\/em> (1995), a biographical drama about the largely unknown life of composer Henry Purcell, which had been started by his friend John Osborne before his death.64<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Wood returned to his fascination with war subjects and soldier characters in several projects towards the end of his television career. Announced as a comedy drama, his BBC television film A Breed of Heroes<\/em> (1994), adapted from the novel by ex-soldier Alan Judd, was the story of young British Army officers in Belfast during the \u2018Troubles\u2019 and emphasised the absurdities of the situation.65<\/a><\/sup> In his Kavanagh QC<\/em> (1995-99) episode Mute of Malice<\/em> a British Army chaplain accused of killing his brother refuses to speak, or is unable to do so, perhaps traumatised by his experiences in the Bosnian war.66<\/a><\/sup> Wood also wrote three episodes of Sharpe<\/em> (1993-2007), from the novels by Bernard Cornwall about the adventures of the eponymous British Army officer and his rifles company in the Napoleonic wars. He also wrote an episode of the Second World War serial Monsignor Renard<\/em> (2000) set in occupied France in 1940.67<\/a><\/sup> Wood has not worked in television since, but has co-written the films Iris<\/em> (2001) and The Other Man<\/em> (2008) with director Richard Eyre.<\/p>\n

With such a varied body of work, it\u2019s hard to draw any solid conclusions about Wood\u2019s television canon. However, it\u2019s notable how humour runs through all his scripts, sometimes openly but sometimes hidden beneath a bleaker surface, and often very dark in tone. In such grim subjects as racism, rape and war, Wood pinpoints an absurdity that makes for sometimes uncomfortable comedy. An element of autobiography can also be seen in much of his best work. This is obvious in his many dramas about soldiers, but his time as a commercial artists and Bristol resident inform other works, while his many years of frustration as a writer are dramatised in Don\u2019t Forget to Write!<\/em> and a handful of television plays featuring writers. Perhaps Wood\u2019s greatest talent as a writer is his gift for earthy, real-sounding yet witty and expressive dialogue, seemingly learned from the unusual combination of an exposure to theatre life at an early age and then immersion in the world of soldiers, with their particular slang, jargon and rhythms of speech.<\/p>\n

Whilst Wood will likely be remembered best as a stage dramatist, it is arguably in television that he has had the greatest success. With its masses of domestic viewers, television has provided Wood his largest audience, and it is the medium in which his work has been most frequently produced. Indeed, with productions as diverse as single plays, literary adaptations and episodes of popular series, Wood has proved himself capable of straddling a variety of television drama genres in a way few dramatists have managed. It is sad that his television work is now largely inaccessible to the modern viewer and, with a few notable exceptions, seemingly forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Oliver Wake, 2014 and 2024<\/p>\n

With thanks to Nick Cooper, and the BBC Written Archives Centre, for research assistance.<\/p>\n

Originally posted: 31 May 2014.
\nUpdates:
\n26 August 2024: added Prisoner and Escort endnote; amended Do As I Say discussion by deleting press reviews and adding discussion of internal BBC response via BBC Written Archives Centre file; minor amendments to Red Monarch discussion; minor amendments to A Breed of Heroes discussion.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

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