In North America right now, Netflix has the conch.<\/p>\n
The phrase \u201clord of the flies\u201d has been deployed by hacky comedians to describe brutal, survival-of-the-fittest violence for so long it\u2019s almost lost its power. (I can\u2019t remember who said it, but the description of the group dressing room at Loehmann\u2019s department store as \u201cLord of the Flies <\/em>in pantyhose\u201d sure brought the house down for my grandmother and her friends.) The BBC\u2019s new, robust adaptation of William Golding\u2019s book reclaims the title\u2019s urgency.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n In North America right now, Netflix has the conch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The phrase \u201clord of the flies\u201d has been deployed by hacky comedians to describe brutal, survival-of-the-fittest violence for so long it\u2019s almost lost its power. (I can\u2019t remember who said it, but the description of the group dressing room at Loehmann\u2019s department store as \u201cLord of the Flies <\/em>in pantyhose\u201d sure brought the house down for my grandmother and her friends.) The BBC\u2019s new, robust adaptation of William Golding\u2019s book reclaims the title\u2019s urgency.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s never been a period when this tale of what Theodore Dalrymple has called<\/a> \u201cthe fragility of goodness\u201d hasn\u2019t been relevant, with current world leaders growing more frank in their bullying, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s 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\u2014which 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\u2019s Coral Island<\/em>, a popular castaway adventure. He had witnessed unspeakable horrors in combat but also had few illusions about the way boys\u2014even supposedly well-heeled boys\u2014really 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\u2014or out of\u2014the room in Toy Story.<\/em>)<\/p>\n With this in mind he created his marooned, archetypal characters: heroic Ralph, brainy Piggy, cruel Jack, and sensitive Simon, as well as the other \u201cbiguns\u201d and \u201clittleuns,\u201d 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\u2014a 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.<\/p>\n A still from Lord of the Flies<\/i>.J Redza\/Eleven\/Sony Pictures Television<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Much as Golding\u2019s background led him to put pen to paper, this is the perfect project for the prolific and in-demand writer-producer Jack Thorne. Among his many successful previous works is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child<\/em>, the blockbuster play sequel to J.K. Rowling\u2019s franchise, and his most recent hit is Adolescence<\/em>, the harrowing four-part series examining the murderous effect of school bullying, which was actually shot concurrently with Lord of the Flies<\/em>. If the guy has a brand, it\u2019s British kids in dorky uniforms and British kids who kill one another, so why not put the two together?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thorne first wanted to adapt the story 15 years ago and it is clear he\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Ralph, the boys\u2019 initial chief, is still the heroic figure in Thorne\u2019s version, but it\u2019s 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\u2014an overweight, asthmatic, deeply vision-impaired kid with lower class sentence structures\u2014is a character to be pitied then eventually admired; readers\u2014and Ralph\u2014come to recognize that Piggy is smart and ought to be listened to, but in the series, it\u2019s clear right away that he\u2019s the only one with his head screwed on straight. Thorne has done away with any equivocation. In fact, he\u2019s done something that the two film versions failed to do: He\u2019s honored the boy\u2019s request not <\/em>to be called Piggy, and given him a name. (It\u2019s Nicky.) By the final scenes, Ralph, now fully embarrassed that he ever treated his comrade so poorly, begins using it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thorne also builds out Piggy\u2019s character, giving him more humanizing time on screen. We learn that he\u2019s a great fan of Groucho Marx routines; while collecting wood, he sings a bit of Groucho\u2019s song \u201cHello, I Must Be Going\u201d (as well as parts of \u201cHooray for Captain Spaulding\u201d), including the bit of Yiddish. (\u201cDid someone call me schnorrer<\/em><\/a>?\u201d) Over the years, many have interpreted Piggy as being Jewish, especially if you consider Lord of the Flies <\/em>as an enormous World War II allegory. The new version adds a little more schmaltz to that fire.<\/p>\n Piggy also doesn\u2019t die as quickly in Thorne\u2019s series. When he\u2019s bonked on the head with a boulder by Jack\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n 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\u2019s work in this area, as well as a deep affinity for the character.<\/p>\n Jack\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 <\/em>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\u2019s heart, we learn that his cruelty emerges from a furnace of fear, and while this doesn\u2019t excuse his actions, it does give them context.<\/p>\n Simon\u2019s 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\u2019s worse is that Jack would toy with his emotions\u2014he\u2019d 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\u2019s confusion in about three seconds. As activity on the island grows increasingly savage, Simon\u2019s fragile perception goes haywire. The trees explode into unnatural colors, waterfalls move backward, a pig\u2019s head on a spike begins speaking to him. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Sawyers in Lord of the Flies<\/i>.J Redza\/Eleven\/Sony Pictures Television<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The biggest and most controversial changes to the text come with Ralph. This being 2026, Thorne understandably made an effort to diversify the casting. As such, the young and quite terrific biracial actor Winston Sawyers has the most heroic role. When cast of the new series was announced, \u201canti-woke\u201d arguments appeared online: Thorne said<\/a> that his team faced complaints that the show would be anti-white, but he rejected that idea, saying nothing about these characters is simplistic. \u201cThe book is more complicated than people give it credit for,\u201d he told the Radio Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, when critics complain about, say, the diverse casting in Hamilton<\/em>, they are being willfully annoying. No, the first treasurer of the United States did not have Puerto Rican heritage, but he also didn\u2019t sing and dance! This \u201coh, get over it!\u201d 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\u2019s Bridgerton <\/em>series and Enola Holmes <\/em>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<\/a>) that for a project like Lord of the Flies<\/em>, casting like this is an overcorrection, and may actually do some harm. To put it bluntly: No one in Thorne\u2019s 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\u2019s anger against Ralph, but the lack of acknowledgment feels false.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s henchmen shortly before he is killed. (Some versions of the text, now ubiquitous in schools, have swapped this for \u201cIndians\u201d or \u201csavages,\u201d though the 2011 Faber & Faber reprint I picked up at New Jersey\u2019s 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<\/em> interview<\/a>, said in the same article, \u201cit\u2019s also about this specific<\/em> group of boys that Golding\u2019s writing about.\u201d I don\u2019t think Sawyers should not have been cast, but I do feel Thorne made a misstep by ignoring the change. I\u2019m sorry to say, but he\u2019s given the characters\u2014and the viewing audience\u2014way too much credit. If Lord of the Flies <\/em>teaches anything, it\u2019s the importance of confronting all that is troubling about human nature if it is ever to be tamed.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n <\/span>
\n
\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/3-LORDOFTHEFLIESUK_15355742.jpg?w=800\")
\n <\/span>