| Richard Carpenter | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1933 (age 78–79) King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, UK |
| Occupation | Screenwriter Author Actor |
Richard "Kip" Carpenter (born 1933) is an English television screenwriter, author and actor who has created a number of popular British television series, the best known internationally is probably Robin of Sherwood.
Born in King's Lynn, Norfolk,[1] he attended the Old Vic Theatre School before starting an acting career by working in rep. He appeared in occasional films, but was mostly active on British TV in the 60s as a character player, on one occasion opposite Tony Hancock in one of his last shows for the BBC, commonly known as "The Bowmans".
In 1969, Carpenter created Catweazle, the children's series about an unfortunate wizard from the 11th century who is accidentally transported to the present-day. This changed the course of his career substantially. During the 1970s, he wrote the series The Ghosts of Motley Hall (1976–78), Dick Turpin (1979–82), parts of the series Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Doctor Snuggles and seventeen episodes of The Adventures of Black Beauty for ITV companies; and Cloudburst, The Boy from Space and The King's Dragon as part of BBC's Look and Read (1967–2004) programme for schools, some episodes of which he also presented.
In the eighties came the historical adventures Smuggler and its later antipodean-based follow-up Adventurer and between them, the lavish HTV production Robin of Sherwood, which ran for three series. Carpenter then worked on a number of series for children and families in the nineties (The Winjin Pom, Stanley's Dragon and Out of Sight), some of which (The Borrowers, The Return of the Borrowers, and The Scarlet Pimpernel) were based on classic novels.
Carpenter wrote novelisations of many of the early series he created: Catweazle, Cloudburst, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Smuggler, Robin of Sherwood (two books), and two books of Dick Turpin.