Lord of the Flies on Netflix Is the TV Adaptation That Probably Should Have Been Made Decades Ago
William Golding’s 1954 novel has been adapted for film twice — Peter Brook’s bleak 1963 version and Harry Hook’s muddled 1990 American take — and neither has held up as a definitive interpretation. Jack Thorne, who wrote Adolescence, now has a four-episode BBC series that landed on Netflix in the US on May 4, and critics are calling it the adaptation that may make all subsequent attempts unnecessary.
The Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 91%. The Metacritic weighted average is 84, which the site classifies as universal acclaim. The Telegraph gave it five stars. The Spectator called it “mesmerically brilliant.” The phrase “tour de force” has been used more than once.
What distinguishes Thorne’s version is its commitment to interiority. The source material is about the speed at which civilization collapses under pressure, and Thorne’s script reportedly finds ways to externalize that deterioration that prose cannot — through the visual grammar of four-episode serialized television, the story can breathe and accumulate dread rather than being compressed into ninety minutes. Director Marc Munden’s use of fisheye photography has divided audience opinion sharply, with some finding it immersive and others finding it a distraction, but the critical consensus suggests the ambition largely pays off.
The child cast — none of them known names — has drawn particular praise. A uniformly effective ensemble of young actors performing a story about children in moral extremis is harder to achieve than it sounds. For viewers who last encountered the novel as assigned reading and want to return to it through a different medium, this is the version to seek out.