Netflix’s 4-part ‘Lord of the Flies’ is a savage, surreal survival tale

“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