“Boys will be boys,” the truism has it. For better or worse, British showrunner Jack Thorne has emerged as our foremost expositor of that idea.
Thorne’s previous project was an example of “worse.” Adolescence (2025) was the platonic ideal of the wrong story for the moment. Set in present-day Doncaster, the series said nothing at all about the Pakistani “rape gangs” then in the news, focusing its ire instead on the supposed misogyny and rage of white, 13-year-old Yorkshiremen. The show told, in other words, a lie of omission. Whatever the virtues of its performances and whiz-bang camerawork, Thorne’s saga felt less like a digital-age Bildungsroman than like propaganda.
In part because of its august literary heritage, Thorne’s latest effort dodges this trap. Netflix’s four-part Lord of the Flies is based (of course) on the 1954 novel by William Golding, a schoolroom classic since the early 1960s. The series is easily the best literary adaptation since Steven Zaillian’s stunning Ripley (2024) and will thrill even those audiences who greeted Adolescence with a scowl. Meticulously designed and cast, Thorne’s take on the book is a ripping Swiss Family Robinson (1960) yarn turned into a surrealist nightmare, a political fable with none of Adolescence’s ham-fisted partisanship. If, as seems likely, the former playwright has turned his attention permanently to television, then Lord of the Flies heralds much good viewing to come. Watch Thorne’s eerie production and shudder.
Like the novel, the series concerns a troupe of boys made to forge their own society after an island plane crash. The protagonists are four youngsters who together span much of the range of human nature. Ralph, capable but demure, would be a natural leader but for his inability to act ruthlessly. Imperious Jack is Ralph’s rival and foil, a preening showman who understands instantly that the rules of British decorum no longer hold. Clever but frail, Simon hovers between these poles, serving for a time as Jack’s conscience but slowly shifting his loyalty. More steadfast is Nicholas (aka “Piggy”), Ralph’s bespectacled deputy, chief administrator, and friend.
Thorne’s work with young actors is nothing short of astonishing. In addition to its main ensemble, Lord of the Flies features perhaps two dozen child extras, some of them seemingly only four or five years old. Restless, begrimed, and increasingly frightened, these boys comprise the mob that Ralph and Jack must wrestle to control. One lapse in verisimilitude from a child performer could sink the whole show, as could any trace of munchkin sweetness at odds with the series’s tone. What we get instead from these “littluns” is a convincing pliability. In the absence of adult authority, it only makes sense that some older boy will establish an island throne.
Although the young actor playing Jack, Lox Pratt, has already been cast as Draco Malfoy in HBO’s forthcoming Harry Potter series, the rest of Thorne’s leads consist of unknowns, a strategy of particular utility for audiences who haven’t read Golding’s book and don’t know whose side to be on. Take note of the name Ike Talbut: the young man playing Simon will be heard from again, perhaps in a big way. Yet all four of the show’s headliners do strong work, making their characters likable, or at least fathomable. Most importantly, all manage a subtlety of expression rare among TV performers not yet in their middle teens.
Other facets of the production are equally stirring. The show’s score, by The White Lotus’s Cristobal Tapia de Veer, nods at the intrepid survival films of the 1950s and ’60s but darts down crooked trails, some of them blazed by composer Jonny Greenwood in scores such as There Will Be Blood (2007). Long stretches of the program owe a debt to The Thin Red Line (1998), Terrence Malick’s lyrical World War II epic, but Thorne adds his own visual touches that serve to make the show’s color scheme more lurid, for instance, as the boys grow feral. Perhaps most intriguing is Thorne’s inclusion of choral music by Britten and Vaughan Williams, a choice that might have seemed cynical were it not so effective. Here is Britain’s glorious cultural heritage, the production implies. And here, descending into madness, are her children.
Lord of the Flies comes no closer than that to ostentatious, standard-issue leftism. Nevertheless, the series, like the book, demands to be understood as political allegory, a character study comprehending not only individuals but also whole classes, nations, and times. Piggy (David McKenna), responsible and well-meaning, knows enough to follow feeder streams to fresh water but doesn’t grasp that revealing his hated nickname to strangers is a bad idea. Ralph’s (Winston Sawyers) naval officer father has outfitted him with every skill necessary for command except a basic familiarity with human beings. Cementing control of the “tribe” requires of Jack not civic virtue but raw charisma and resolve. Stripped of their civilizing institutions, the boys will not be governed by bureaucratic managerialists. They desire a strongman.
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Some will say, of course, that Netflix’s program is yet another critique of “toxic masculinity.” Thorne himself has characterized the show as “a psychological study of a time as well as a psychological study of a gender.” All well and good, I suppose, but the reader will forgive me for seeing an examination of liberalism’s suicidal self-regard instead. Ralph fails because he cannot fathom that other boys hold values at odds with his own. Jack succeeds, at least for a time, because he recognizes and acts according to reality.
Or does he? Among the ironies of Golding’s novel is how swiftly the rescued boys fall into the embrace of Mother England, their cruelty replaced in an instant with grateful sobs. It turns out that they were only ever playing at savagery. They meant no harm.
Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the Washington Examiner magazine.