The award-winning creator of Adolescence is tackling a new darkly twisted TV series, this time with an even more terrifying cast of children.
Jack Thorne, who wrote the devastating British limited series that swept the 2025 awards season, will once again torment viewers with a new children-focused series on Netflix: The Lord of the Flies.
The four-part series adapts William Golding’s 1954 novel of the same name, pitting British schoolboys against one another as they vie for survival after a brutal plane crash leaves them stranded on a deserted island.
“The sky is darkening, and the beast is close at hand,” the show’s villain, Jack (Lox Pratt), says in the opening of the show’s trailer.
The show, written for TV by Thorne, 47, has half the schoolboys who attempt civility—led by Ralph (Winston Sawyers) and his bespectacled best friend Piggy (David McKenna)—face off against the brash, survivalist remainder, commanded by Jack.
Adolescence, which won big at the Emmys, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes, depicts a 13-year-old boy, Jamie (Owen Cooper), who is tragically influenced by incel culture, misogynistic social media, and the rage of being rejected romantically.
Whereas Adolescence unpacks the modern Alpha Male epidemic through a single, central character, The Lord of the Flies divides its many male characters along moral and ideological lines. Both shows, however, deal with death, among their many dark subjects.
The new trailer shows the boys shrieking in fear as their plane crash-lands on the island, except for Jack, who remains strangely calm throughout. The story’s villain and his crew wear black capes, shoes, and hats over their school uniforms, contrasting the other boys’ ragtag ensembles.
“We’re trying to figure out exactly where we are,” Piggy says when his group first meets up with Jack’s on the beach.
“Ha! What nonsense,” Jack responds, grinning.
While Ralph and Piggy form an organized group of “littluns” on the beach, hoping for rescue, Jack’s “biguns” descend into the jungle, creating a group closer to an army than a community. Gradually, the boys shed their uniforms in favor of war paint.
The trailer depicts Jack’s gang lighting wildfires, fashioning weapons out of sticks and rocks, and brandishing a boar’s head on a spear.
“I am a hunter,” Jack says during a cliff-top faceoff with Ralph.
“You are a failure!” Ralph screams back.
Goldin’s story has been adapted many times before, with each focusing on a different aspect of its Cold War era plot, but Thorne pulls out themes of misogyny and critiques the male ego.
The limited series first aired on the BBC in the U.K. in February to rave reviews, also for its soundtrack featuring Oscar-winning Hans Zimmer. The series has been picked up by Netflix and will premiere on the streamer for U.S. viewers on May 4.
