Netflix, BBC ‘Lord of the Flies’ from ‘Adolescence’ Creator

In North America right now, Netflix has the conch.

The phrase “lord of the flies” has been deployed by hacky comedians to describe brutal, survival-of-the-fittest violence for so long it’s almost lost its power. (I can’t remember who said it, but the description of the group dressing room at Loehmann’s department store as “Lord of the Flies in pantyhose” sure brought the house down for my grandmother and her friends.) The BBC’s new, robust adaptation of William Golding’s book reclaims the title’s urgency.

The phrase “lord of the flies” has been deployed by hacky comedians to describe brutal, survival-of-the-fittest violence for so long it’s almost lost its power. (I can’t remember who said it, but the description of the group dressing room at Loehmann’s department store as “Lord of the Flies in pantyhose” sure brought the house down for my grandmother and her friends.) The BBC’s new, robust adaptation of William Golding’s book reclaims the title’s urgency.

Created and written by Jack Thorne and presented in four hour-long episodes on Netflix in the United States, it is a terrific work that expands the original text in ways that range from thought-provoking to quite brilliant. And while there’s never been a period when this tale of what Theodore Dalrymple has called “the fragility of goodness” hasn’t been relevant, with current world leaders growing more frank in their bullying, there’s no better time than now to revisit the uninhabited, fruit-and-pig rich island that quickly turns from paradise to hell for a group of stranded English schoolboys.

If it’s been a while since you picked up the 1954 novel that quickly became enmeshed in school curricula, it functions as both a grand metaphor for the darkness of human existence as well as a ripping good yarn—which is precisely what Golding had in mind. As a schoolteacher in the early 1950s, the World War II veteran and scholar of Greek literature was annoyed by adventure stories like R. M. Ballantyne’s Coral Island, a popular castaway adventure. He had witnessed unspeakable horrors in combat but also had few illusions about the way boys—even supposedly well-heeled boys—really behaved. (Having once been a boy myself, I can confirm that the on-off switch of group behavior when an adult is around is not dissimilar from the menagerie of toys when a human steps into—or out of—the room in Toy Story.)

With this in mind he created his marooned, archetypal characters: heroic Ralph, brainy Piggy, cruel Jack, and sensitive Simon, as well as the other “biguns” and “littleuns,” who work together for a while under a reasonable system of rules until base impulses and power dynamics turn the lagoon red. The book has been translated to film twice before—a very good though understandably muted 1963 version, and a not-so-good, Americanized (and somewhat modernized) version in 1990. I think the new series is the best, thanks to its rich cinematography, enveloping tone, and fantastic and perceptive performances.

A still from Lord of the Flies.J Redza/Eleven/Sony Pictures Television

Thorne first wanted to adapt the story 15 years ago and it is clear he’s lived with the material a long time. Though it flows nicely as one four-hour piece, the episodic breaks allow for chapters dedicated (and named for) each of the main characters. While individual moments are not replayed, we view the scenario from each of their perspectives, in addition to a few precisely inserted pre-island flashbacks. Short of a blink-and-you-miss-them sentence or two about Ralph’s home life in the book, the backstory elements are new from Thorne, but they feel so right, I had to double check the novel. Assuming no one will get too upset about spoilers for a 72-year-old book, here are some specifics, and why they are notable.

Ralph, the boys’ initial chief, is still the heroic figure in Thorne’s version, but it’s a little unclear if he is the protagonist. We meet Piggy first, unlike in the book, and though the bespectacled intellectual can be a little bit of a nuisance with his frequent calls for meetings, he is far more sympathetic here. In the book, Piggy—an overweight, asthmatic, deeply vision-impaired kid with lower class sentence structures—is a character to be pitied then eventually admired; readers—and Ralph—come to recognize that Piggy is smart and ought to be listened to, but in the series, it’s clear right away that he’s the only one with his head screwed on straight. Thorne has done away with any equivocation. In fact, he’s done something that the two film versions failed to do: He’s honored the boy’s request not to be called Piggy, and given him a name. (It’s Nicky.) By the final scenes, Ralph, now fully embarrassed that he ever treated his comrade so poorly, begins using it.

Thorne also builds out Piggy’s character, giving him more humanizing time on screen. We learn that he’s a great fan of Groucho Marx routines; while collecting wood, he sings a bit of Groucho’s song “Hello, I Must Be Going” (as well as parts of “Hooray for Captain Spaulding”), including the bit of Yiddish. (“Did someone call me schnorrer?”) Over the years, many have interpreted Piggy as being Jewish, especially if you consider Lord of the Flies as an enormous World War II allegory. The new version adds a little more schmaltz to that fire.

Piggy also doesn’t die as quickly in Thorne’s series. When he’s bonked on the head with a boulder by Jack’s goon, Roger, he stumbles around then slowly succumbs to his wounds, with Ralph aiding him the best he can. (The child performances are stunning and these scenes are incredibly difficult to watch.)

For over 25 years, Thorne has lived with a condition called cholinergic urticaria (basically, chronic hives), and has used his voice to advocate for people with disabilities, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. (He has also recently been diagnosed with autism as an adult.) Tweaks to the Piggy character, I suspect, come directly from Thorne’s work in this area, as well as a deep affinity for the character.

Jack’s chapter is led by the remarkable young actor Lox Pratt, who plays the wormy, sniveling choir leader and head boy as if he were Rowling’s Draco Malfoy. (I was quite delighted to learn, after watching the series, that he has already been cast as the Slytherin baddie in the forthcoming HBO Harry Potter reboot.) Thorne makes it abundantly clear that it is the harshness of the environment, the specificity of the situation, and the grooming of these boys that made their fate: With a window into Jack’s heart, we learn that his cruelty emerges from a furnace of fear, and while this doesn’t excuse his actions, it does give them context.

Simon’s chapter is my favorite, because it lets Thorne and his director Marc Munden pull out the cinematic stops. The moody boy who begins communing with the darkness of the island idolizes Jack before the crash, moving beyond just a boyhood crush. What’s worse is that Jack would toy with his emotions—he’d befriend him when they were alone, but ignore him in front of others. A few quick glimpses in a chapel (Simon moves his gaze between the blond Jack and the tormented Christ) tells the whole story of Simon’s confusion in about three seconds. As activity on the island grows increasingly savage, Simon’s fragile perception goes haywire. The trees explode into unnatural colors, waterfalls move backward, a pig’s head on a spike begins speaking to him. It’s all very far-out stuff, especially when the camera turns to close-ups of the natural world and the soundtrack leans in on choral works by 20th century British composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, and John Tavener.

Sawyers in Lord of the Flies.J Redza/Eleven/Sony Pictures Television

However, when critics complain about, say, the diverse casting in Hamilton, they are being willfully annoying. No, the first treasurer of the United States did not have Puerto Rican heritage, but he also didn’t sing and dance! This “oh, get over it!” retort works for nearly any film or show (particularly one aimed at kids) that brings more diversity to its cast (and employment opportunities to minority actors) than might be historically expected. Netflix’s Bridgerton series and Enola Holmes films (the latter coincidentally written by Jack Thorne) are good examples, but they are frothy fantasies. One could make a good faith case (and some have) that for a project like Lord of the Flies, casting like this is an overcorrection, and may actually do some harm. To put it bluntly: No one in Thorne’s adaptation mentions that Ralph is biracial and this feels, to me, disrespectful to those who suffered racist abuse in a 1950s British context. If Piggy is mocked for being fat and asthmatic, Jack surely would have stigmatized Ralph for his heritage. One can certainly read racial animosity as part of what drives Jack’s anger against Ralph, but the lack of acknowledgment feels false.

In the original book, there is, in fact, a rather controversial use of the N-word, by Piggy of all characters, who shouts it at Jack’s henchmen shortly before he is killed. (Some versions of the text, now ubiquitous in schools, have swapped this for “Indians” or “savages,” though the 2011 Faber & Faber reprint I picked up at New Jersey’s Monmouth County Library System because it included a preface by Stephen King uses the original phrasing.) My point is that Thorne, who specifically addressed not including girls in his adaptation in an Esquire interview, said in the same article, “it’s also about this specific group of boys that Golding’s writing about.” I don’t think Sawyers should not have been cast, but I do feel Thorne made a misstep by ignoring the change. I’m sorry to say, but he’s given the characters—and the viewing audience—way too much credit. If Lord of the Flies teaches anything, it’s the importance of confronting all that is troubling about human nature if it is ever to be tamed.