“Golding captured something that no one else has quite captured”: Jack Thorne, Joel Wilson and Marc Munden on Lord of the Flies

Somehow, Lord of the Flies has managed to evade an adaptation for decades. But Jack Thorne, the man behind the critically acclaimed Adolescence, has put an end to that with his evocative take on William Golding’s masterwork.

It’s been a long time coming for Thorne and Wilson, who collaborated with director Marc Munden on the BBC series. Speaking at the BFI Southbank following an advanced screening of the first episode, Wilson recalled how he sought the approval of the Golding family. “I wrote to someone connected to the Golding estate … And years later we made Sex Education, and that put us on the map a bit,” he said, “and then Jack was having lunch at my house, and I said to him, ‘How the hell am I ever going to get you to work with me again?’ And he said, ‘Well, if you can get Lord of the Flies, I’ll do that.’”

The project was a dream come true for Thorne, who added, “Joel said, ‘What is the one book you’re desperate to do, you’ve never had the chance to do?’ And I said Lord of the Flies, it’s always been Lord of the Flies for me, and I’ve tried a few times.”

Unique for a small screen production, the series is highly visual, with evocative close-ups of the actors’ faces adding to the looming chaos of the island. Munden discussed his approach to directing these scenes. “We searched for locations and gradually that sort of sense of the world that those boys have come from, the sort of paranoid, sort of postwar, sort of Cold War world, we got to infuse that somehow in the island,” he said.

The tale of a group of stranded schoolboys succumbing to violence and pandemonium following a failed attempt at democracy has always been a morally ambiguous one. “I think what’s wonderful about his writing and what I hope we bring out in this adaptation is that it’s about glorious shades of grey. No one’s perfect, no one’s imperfect on that island,” Thorne said.

Wilson discussed finding the ideal location for the series, which was shot in Malaysia. “We looked at lots of different locations, and then we carefully selected the least practical!” he mused. “So we were trekking through the jungles at an hour at a time, so we were shooting in very inaccessible and inhospitable locations.”

Piggy (played by the fantastic David McKenna), who initiates the democratic order of the uninhabited island, is the focus of the first episode. Thorne revealed why he chose to centre this tragic character early on, while praising the talents of the young, unknown cast. “You’ve got the sort of democracy with Piggy and then you’ve got the breakdown of democracy with Jack and then you’ve got the chaos with Simon and then you’ve got war with Ralph,” he said, continuing, “There’s a Hitchcock quote that I think I’ve misappropriated, which is, ‘Dialogue is the just the words actors say while their faces tell the story.’ And I think there’s something so powerful about watching everything that Mark does, then watching these kids.”

On that note, Munden discussed the casting process, noting that he wanted to select a diverse array of actors. “We scoured around the whole of the UK looking for everyone,” he said. “We spent a few months whittling it down, trying to find the right people for the roles.”

There are comparisons to be made between Adolescence and Lord of the Flies, with Thorne revealing how one informed the other. “Definitely Golding slipped into Adolescence and I think a little bit of Adolescence slipped into this,” he reflected, continuing, “It’s the moment before adolescence, I find that moment absolutely incredible to look at. My son is about to hit that moment, ten, 11, 12, when I think so much of us is made, and I think Golding captured something that no one else has quite captured.”