The descent from schoolboy order to island anarchy returns in a four-part adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies — but this time, viewers learn more about the boys’ lives before they become castaways.
Written by Jack Thorne, co-creator and writer of the hit series Adolescence, and directed by BAFTA and Emmy-winning filmmaker Marc Munden, the series is an Eleven and One Shoe Films production backed by Sony Pictures Television for BBC iPlayer, BBC One and Stan.
The four-episode series follows British schoolboys stranded on an island without adults after a plane crash. Ralph tries to preserve order, while Jack draws the boys toward hunting and a struggle for leadership.
Though there have been previous Lord of the Flies adaptations, including a 1990 film that deviated heavily from the source material, the miniseries returns the characters to their British schoolboy origins and the setting to the early 1950s. Here are seven things to know about the new series.
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1. A return to the novel’s era
Unlike the 1990s film, which recast the boys as American military cadets and moved the story to the late Cold War, the 2026 series returns to Golding’s British schoolboys in the early 1950s. Set in the shadow of the Second World War, it highlights how their upbringing shapes their behaviour.
Thorne pushed back on reading the novel as a simple portrait of humanity’s innate savagery. “I don’t think that’s what Golding wrote,” he told CBC News. “I think what Golding wrote was a story about boys that had been brought up by traumatized parents, by parents dealing with a world they do not understand.”
Thorne says the boys, who are largely from military families, had been “nurtured in [the war’s] violence and hate” before playing it out on the island.
2. Piggy gets a name and a fuller story
In the novel and the 1990 film, “Piggy” is a cruel nickname given to one of the boys at school. The new series reveals that the boy, played by David McKenna, is named Nicholas or Nicky.
Ralph (Winston Sawyers) initially betrays Piggy’s trust by sharing the nickname with the others. Over time, the two grow close, with Piggy’s intellect complimenting Ralph’s leadership skills. Thorne describes Ralph’s journey from “seeing Piggy as Piggy to seeing Piggy as Nicky” as “a rather beautiful arc.”
Speaking to BBC, McKenna calls Piggy “the responsible one who wants to keep everything calm and have rules.” The series also gives more weight to his final moments, emphasizing the emotional toll on the other boys.
Ralph, played by Winston Sawyers, left, and Piggy, played by David McKenna, in a scene from Lord of the Flies. (J Redza/CBC/Sony Pictures Television/2025 Eleven Film Ltd.)
3. Ralph’s identity
In this adaptation, Ralph is mixed-race, with a black mother and a white military father. The change adds another dimension to his struggle to hold the respect of the other boys and preserve his position as group leader.
Sawyers describes Ralph as committed to his principles even as the group falls apart. “He doesn’t want to join the bad guys,” Sawyers told BBC.
“Ralph is quite rooted in who he is and what he believes in. At the end of the story, he’s traumatised, beaten, bruised and he’s essentially just broken — but he survives.”
4. Character depth and back stories
While the 1990 movie focuses on the institutional collapse within the group to hit major action beats, the miniseries is structured in four-parts, with Piggy, Jack, Simon and Ralph each taking the focus of one episode.
Flashbacks fill in their lives before the crash, including the effects of troubled family relationships.
The series reveals that Jack and Simon are both haunted by abusive fathers. It also offers a raw, intimate look at Simon’s internal struggles through his diary entries. Ike Talbut, who plays Simon, describes him as someone with heightened emotional and spiritual awareness.
“He watches before he talks,” Talbut said in an interview with BBC. “Simon just witnesses everything more and from that stance of knowledge he just knows what’s going to happen.”
Lox Pratt, centre, plays Jack, one of the stranded schoolboys who leads the uniformed members of the school’s choir onto the beach in a dramatic entrance. (Lisa Tomasetti/CBC/Sony Pictures Television/2025 Eleven Film Ltd.)
5. The power of the choir
The series leans into the visual and social hierarchy on display within the group. That includes using the striking black uniforms worn by members of the school’s choir to create an immediate power dynamic among the stranded boys and helping to fuel Jack’s early rise to dominance.
Lox Pratt, who plays Jack, explains that the boys are drawn to Jack’s volatility over Ralph’s stability. “Ralph is interesting because he’s a good leader, he prioritizes the right things, whereas Jack doesn’t, but he is exciting,” Pratt told BBC.
“I think that people don’t go to the side that’s doing necessarily the right thing, but they go to the side that’s going to give them a bit more excitement,” he said.
6. Adult presence (or lack thereof)
The 1990 film includes an adult pilot who survives the crash but is left delirious by his injuries and unable to offer the boys much help. The new series removes that presence entirely, leaving the boys on their own and making the dead pilot — and the fear surrounding the “beast” — part of the island’s psychological landscape.
For Munden, the story’s terror comes from the boys themselves. “The Beast is us,” he told BBC. “The tendency towards conflict and chaos is self-inflicted.”
Simon, played by Ike Talbut, left, and Jack, played by Pratt, crouch in a cave on the island. (J Redza/CBC/Sony Pictures Television/2025 Eleven Film Ltd.)
7. From postcard paradise to hallucinatory nightmare
The 1990 film’s lush, tropical scenery made the island feel beautiful even as the society the boys created became violent. The new adaptation uses a more unsettling visual language, drawing on the dense Malaysian rainforest where the series was filmed.
Munden and cinematographer Mark Wolf developed an infrared, “day for night” approach for scenes set after dark. The camera transforms green foliage into pinks and reds, creating what Munden called “a hallucinatory feel, heightened with magical realism.”
The cast and crew also had to contend with the real conditions of filming in Malaysia. Munden described the rainforest as difficult to navigate and said the days were marked by “extreme humidity and heat.”
For Thorne, the adaptation is also a warning about what children absorb from the adults around them.
“Be careful how we treat our children. Be careful what we allow our children to see,” he told CBC News. “We live in a time when it seems easier to hate than it is to love.”
The four-part Lord of the Flies begins streaming on CBC Gem on Oct. 22, with a weekly CBC TV broadcast at 9 p.m. (9:30 p.m. NT).
