The acting in Jack Thorne’s four-part adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is excellent, but the script fails to capture the novel’s power. The show, which premieres in 2026, struggles to instil the dread that made Golding’s 1954 classic a GCSE staple for decades.
The story follows a group of boys stranded on a tropical island after a plane crash. Piggy (David McKenna) and Ralph (Winston Sawyers) attempt to establish order, but Jack (Lox Pratt) leads the choirboys into a savage tribe. The narrative unfolds slowly, with lingering shots of the landscape and empty horizon, relying heavily on viewers’ familiarity with the original rather than building tension independently.
Thorne’s script is criticised as unevocative and unconvincing, with lines like “You’re having a jolly good time, aren’t you?” and “This is a bad camp of bad people!” The adaptation also adds backstories for each main character—Jack from a loveless home, Ralph with a sick mother, Simon with an abusive father—which reduces the elemental allegory of inherent evil.
Each episode focuses on a different character, but the pacing feels both bloated and thin. The desaturated palette during violent scenes is described as a gimmick that fails to hide the absence of real emotion. Overall, the series is a pale imitation of Golding’s harrowing novel.
