Adolescence Writer Adapts Popular Classic YA Literature ‘Lord of the Flies’ To Screen

Jack Thorne, acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, and writer of ‘Adolescence’, has adapted the popular classic coming-of-age literature ‘Lord of the Flies’ into a TV series.

The four-part series, which shares similarities with Thorne’s previous projects (Adolescence, the stage hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), is a tale of boys behaving in gruesome ways.

BBC’s Hugh Montgomery, however, describes the adaptation as more of an allegory about society’s troubles than those of male youth.

In William Golding’s 1954 tale, following a plane crash during a war, British schoolboys are stranded on a deserted Island. Events take a disastrous turn as they move away from civilisation, order breaks down, and the boys descend to savagery. Golding explores themes of power, loss of innocence, survival, crowd mentality, and the dangerous effects of disorder.

Thorne’s adaptation, while maintaining the book’s period setting and language, with characters speaking in an archaic, upper-crust British vernacular, feels strikingly fresh and distinct.

The freshness comes from two things, said Montgomery, “he makes the narrative function on two levels, naturalistically, as a tense and immersive thriller, and philosophically, as a dark inquiry into the malignity of collective human behaviour.

“Thorne also gives the main characters and villain a bit more backstory in a manner that Montgomery describes as ‘fine but not smartly necessary’ because the real power of the story lies in the fact that the character and their dynamics are so archetypal.

The screenwriter’s presentation of each episode from a different point of view lends it an intimacy of characterisation.

Likewise, the adaptation’s choice of cast is commendable. Montgomery couldn’t praise the newcomer David McKenna’s portrayal of Piggy enough, and Lox Pratt’s performance as Jack.

“It’s undoubtedly a boon that the series begins with an hour centred on such a charismatic performer as David McKenna, who plays the doomed Piggy, the group’s bespectacled voice of reason, who tries to establish order, but is disregarded and mocked for his weight, among other things. Far from making him a tragic victim, the 12-year-old Northern Irish actor (making his debut, astonishingly) imbues him with such charm and self-possession that it’s even more unjust that the others so roundly ignore him.

“It’s almost a shame when, come the second episode, the protagonist’s mantle passes onto his nemesis, the entitled, populist Jack, who forms a breakaway camp and is the real instigator of chaos, though Lox Pratt is also excellent in that role, capturing the vulnerability beneath the character’s sneering bravado.

From disorienting fish-eye-lens camerawork to Terrence Malick-style cutaways to nature in action featuring swarming ants and scuttling beetles, Munden really envelops the audience in Island life.

The story may centre on children, “but this is, of course, far from a children’s story,” thrilled Montgomery. “It’s “a series made for the most enlightening kind of family viewing, from which all generations can really take something”.

‘Lord of the Flies’, which screened at the ongoing Berlin International Film Festival, is currently screening on BBC1 in the UK, and will be available on Netflix in the US soon.