‘If girls were involved, it would change everything’ – Jack Thorne on why new Lord of The Flies adaptation doesn't have any female characters

Ralph (WINSTON SAWYERS), Piggy (DAVID McKENNA), Eric (CASSIUS FLEMYNG), Sam (NOAH FLEMYNG) in Lord of The Flies

(Image credit: BBC/Eleven/Lisa Tomasetti)

The BBC adaptation of Lord of The Flies is set to be one of the most exciting TV events of the year so far.

Airing from Sunday, February 8, the four-part series marks the first time in history the 1954 classic novel by William Golding has been adapted for the small screen.

Lord of the Flies | Official trailer - BBC - YouTube

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Elaborating further, he continues, "My son is nine. Watching him and his friends in the playground, it's fascinating how much more sophisticated and emotionally nuanced girls are at that age."

"Girls are negotiating quite complex things while boys are working out how fast they can run into a wooden post without hurting themselves."

As adapting the novel has been something Thorne has wanted to do for such a long time, he felt it was only right to stay truthful to the book and not gender swap any characters, giving the show the full benefit of exploring themes affecting boys.

With those themes primarily being the loss of innocence and boyhood masculinity, viewers might be wondering how Thorne will approach them after they already blew up in the media after Adolescence was released.

Thorne correctly suggests that there can never be too many conversations about this important subject, also wanting viewers to know he believes Lord of The Flies is a more "tender" of the topic and therefore has a different angle to Adolescence.

"I think, as a society, we’re having a conversation right now about boys," he says, continuing, "We’re losing a generation of boys and we’re losing it because of the hate they are ingesting - because it is an answer to their loneliness and isolation."

"The interesting thing about Lord of the Flies is that, I think, it’s a really loving portrait of boys. When I read it as an adult, I thought of it as a tender portrait of a lot of very complicated boys having a complicated relationship with their status and anger."

"It’s the perfect distillation of our contemporary problem I think, in terms of looking at the male condition."

David McKenna as Piggy in Lord of The Flies

Another similar Adolescence-based challenge the crew faced when filming the show, was to do with the inexperience of the cast. Like Jamie actor Owen Cooper in the Netflix hit, the cast of Lord of The Flies are made up of entirely unknown child actors.

Cooper had no previous on-screen acting experience, and with the boys all being aged between 10 and 13 on Lord of The Flies, Thorne shares that none of them having prior acting experience was "a big worry."

He also shares that although Owen Cooper was unknown when he joined the Adolescence cast, he was the only one who was new to acting - having every single cast member being entirely new to the industry could've potentially led to carnage.

"Owen Cooper had adult actors around him," Thorne explains, adding, "With this, the boys are all on their own. The casting process was incredibly difficult."

All episodes of Lord of the Flies will be on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Sunday 8 February. On BBC One, episodes will air weekly at 9pm that night.

Lucy is a multi-award nominated writer and blogger with seven years’ experience writing about entertainment, parenting and family life. Lucy worked as a freelance writer and journalist at the likes of PS and moms.com, before joining GoodtoKnow as an entertainment writer, and then as news editor. The pull to return to the world of television was strong, and she was delighted to take a position at woman&home to once again watch the best shows out there, and tell you why you should watch them too.

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