Lord Of The Flies | Preview (BBC One)
- TV Zone
- 4 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Jack Thorne’s adaptation will be the first for television. Truthful to the original novel – set in the early 1950s on an unnamed Pacific island – Thorne’s adaptation delves further into the book’s emotive themes; human nature, the loss of innocence and boyhood masculinity.
Lord of the Flies is the story of a group of young schoolchildren who find themselves stranded on a tropical island with no adults, following a deadly plane crash. In an attempt to remain civil, the boys organise themselves, led by Ralph and supported by the group’s intellectual, Piggy.
But Jack, who is in charge of signal fire duty, is more interested in hunting and vying for leadership and soon begins to draw other boys away from the order of the group and, ultimately, from hope to tragedy.
The castaways are played by Winston Sawyers as Ralph, Lox Pratt as Jack, David McKenna as Piggy and Ike Talbut as Simon. Thomas Connor appears as Roger, Noah and Cassius Flemming as twins Sam and Eric, Cornelius Brandreth as Maurice and Tom Page-Turner as Bill – alongside an ensemble of more than 30 boys playing the desert island camp’s “biguns” and “littluns”.
Each of the four episodes is titled after a character at the core of the story – Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack – offering a subtly different perspective on the boys’ collective plight and manner in which they cope with their predicament. The series has been made with the support of Lord of the Flies author William Golding’s famil
Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama, says: “We’re delighted to pass the conch to Jack Thorne, Marc Munden and this exceptionally talented young cast of stars in the making, who are telling this timeless story in such an epic and emotionally poignant way. Lord of the Flies is British storytelling at its finest and most thoughtful, and there is no better home for its first ever television adaptation than on the BBC.”
All episodes of Lord of the Flies will be on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Sunday 8 February, and BBC One will air the series weekly from 9pm that night.
