The new Netflix adaptation of Lord Of The Flies, written by Jack Thorne (Adolescence) for the BBC and Stan, is the first television adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel. There were also film versions in 1963 and 1990, but Thorne has gotten four hours to explore Golding’s complex story.
Opening Shot: A lingering, fisheye-style view of a tropical jungle. The camera eventually pans down to show a boy in a school uniform lying on the ground.
The Gist: That person lying on the ground is Piggy (David McKenna), who somehow is largely unscathed after a plane carrying classmates from the boarding school where he goes crashed on a tropical island. He is even holding his glasses. As he explores the jungle, he sees a pig running around. He eventually finds Ralph (Winston Sawyers) another kid wandering around after the crash.
Piggy makes the mistake of telling Ralph that the kids at school called him “Piggy,” and it sticks. At a fresh water pond — Ralph swims, Piggy’ doesn’t — Piggy finds a conch shell that he thinks would work well as a horn. He thinks they should blow it to bring out the rest of the survivors, but asks Ralph to do it since he has asthma.
The boys go to the beach and Ralph blows the conch shell; slowly but surely, other survivors come out of the jungle, from “little’uns” to kids their age. Piggy has a lot of good ideas, like asking the group to figure out if anyone else is around, then trying to figure out where to put shelter, start a signal fire, and put a latrine.
Another blow of the conch shell, though, brings out a group of singers in hats and black robes. It’s the choir, led by the charismatic Jack (Lox Pratt) and the fainting Simon (Ike Talbut). When Jack snarls at Piggy and calls him “Fatty,” Ralph tells them the “Piggy” thing in an effort to protect his new friend.
Jack proposes that there should be a chief, and it should be him. Ralph also throws his hat in, and the group votes for Ralph; Jack feels it’s unfair because the group knew Ralph first. But he takes to the idea of leading the choir in the hunt for food and creation of the signal fire. But Piggy sees the real kid under the bravado when Jack can’t bring himself to kill a pig caught in some thistles, and then blames Piggy for distracting him.
As the group climbs to the top of the cliff to see what else is around, they encounter the body of the pilot, and Piggy sees another example of how Jack’s brutal nature will overrule his logic at every turn. Later, Jack’s crew builds a signal fire with Piggy and Ralph, but the fire soon burns out of control.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The themes of Lord Of The Flies, involving a group of kids sliding into anarchy after being stranded and needing to survive on their own, can be seen in shows like Yellowjackets.
Our Take: Given how widely read Lord Of The Flies has been in the last 72 years — seemingly every schoolkid has read it for English class by the time they’re out of high school — the challenge to Thorne was to try to figure out how to tell the familiar story in a new way. The story beats that people are familiar with are all going to be there, including the power struggle between Ralph and Jack, as well as how Piggy falls victim to the same mob mentality that likely plagued him on the schoolyard back in England.
Thorne’s solution to the familiarity issue is to prod the story forward, but tell a particular section of the story by largely concentrating on one of the four main characters — Piggy, Ralph, Jack and Simon. Piggy is featured in the first episode, which makes sense; he’s the one that has the idea to find and organize the survivors, to use the conch shell to signal them to gather, and to make sure that they think about food, shelter and toileting.
But we all know that Piggy’s logical voice is going to be buried under the things that make him different that kids like Jack are going to exploit to their advantage. Here, Ralph is portrayed as a nice guy who seems to want to get along with everyone, but not a particularly good leader, and someone who will betray Piggy in a second if it gets him a laugh. Jack is also nuanced in the first episode; he’s a classic bully whose aggressiveness is covering for his own troubled background.
What stuck out for us that Marc Munden’s direction gave us that same visceral uneasiness that the novel gave us when we first read it in school decades ago.
Despite the fact that these boys have this big tropical island to themselves, there is still a claustrophobic feeling that each of the primary characters feel, which is communicated via a generous number of closeups. Anyone who was a recipient of schoolyard taunts (raises hand) knows how isolating isolating it can feel, and the immediate sadness we felt for piggy hit us hard. But even the more arrogant Jack has his issues, and we’re looking forward to seeing each of the main characters’ issues examined as the group’s familiar slide into anarchy continues.
Performance Worth Watching: David McKenna is what we envisioned Piggy to look and act like when we read the book; he’s smart but sensitive, and a person who wants to be in charge but knows no one will listen to him.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: As the fire rages, Piggy holds the conch shell and tries to find one of the “little’uns” that hasn’t been accounted for.
Sleeper Star: Lake Coleman plays the “boy with the birthmark”, a little’un with a big birthmark around one eye, and he’s got an otherworldly presence whenever he’s on screen.
Most Pilot-y Line: The first episode moves slow at times, with the camera lingering over the jungle scenery using some camera tricks to make it look more surreal and nightmarish. There is also an extended scene where an older kid drives some little’uns nuts by throwing rocks in the water.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Jack Thorne has managed to make the series adaptation of Lord Of The Flies fresh by giving viewers as close to a visceral experience of being in the middle of the chaos as possible, with good performances by the actors playing the main characters.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.