William Golding’s classic 1954 novel is about a group of schoolboys stranded on island after a plane crash.Lisa Tomasetti/Eleven/Sony Pictures/Supplied
Last year, British screenwriter Jack Thorne terrified parents around the world with Adolescence.
That Netflix one-shot miniseries about Jamie, a 13 year old who commits a shocking act of violence, sparked conversation about boys and the manosphere and helped supercharge a mass movement to get kids off social media and smartphones.
Now, Thorne is back on the small screen with an adaptation of Lord of the Flies, William Golding’s classic 1954 novel about a group of schoolboys stranded on island after a plane crash.
Things don’t go much better for preadolescents Ralph, Jack, Piggy and Simon left to their own devices than they did for Jamie left to his own (electronic) devices.
JOBFlocks spoke with the Thorne, 47, ahead of the four-part miniseries’s Canadian premiere on CBC and CBC Gem on Oct. 22.
You’ve been trying to adapt Lord of the Flies for a long time.
I first tried to adapt it when I was in my early 30s. The [Golding] estate said no. But it was a book that’s always lived with me.
It has meant a huge amount to me ever since I was a kid, reading it alone in the dark in my room.
How old were you?
Eleven or 12. I read a lot of books at that age because it was before phones and because I was awake a lot at night. I would just pick any book off the shelf and just read it.
What did you take away from it then?
When I was that age, I was very much a Simon in terms of how I saw the world. I remember the feeling of Simon’s death and of being incredibly confused. The image of the boy, the body in the water, and just feeling bereft when that happened.
The other thing I remember feeling was: I know Jack and I hate Jack. I know exactly who he is in the playground, and I know how he feels about me, and I despise him.
How did your feelings about the book change over time?
Jack Thorne arrives at a "Lord of the Flies" ATAS event in Los Angeles earlier this year.Willy Sanjuan/The Associated Press
When I was in my 20s, I read it again and went: Oh, Jack is not the villain that I want him to be. That isn’t how Golding’s written him. There is a lot more at play here.
I do think that’s Golding’s extraordinary gift. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that has such an acute understanding of boys. Not in terms of the inevitable descent or in terms of the chaos of it, but in terms of the minute observation of the way that boys behave.
The Lord of the Flies premiered on BBC a year after Adolescence so, from the public’s point of view, it feels as if you’re returning to certain themes. But the projects were probably in development at the same time.
I was already writing Lord of the Flies when [co-writer and star] Stephen Graham called me up to get Adolescence started. They actually filmed the same summer. Lord of the Flies took much longer in the edit because, obviously, the edit of Adolescence was just literally “Cut. Okay, there we are. We’re finished.”
Did the experience of working on the adaptation of Lord of the Flies influence your writing of Adolescence then?
Whether I’d done this adaptation or not, Golding would have influenced Adolescence – but I do think they’re about something slightly different. The ages of 10 to 12 of boys in Lord of the Flies is very different from 13 to 15, which is the place that Jamie’s at. Preadolescence, that jostle for supremacy before you arrive at the sort of teenage years, is quite different from adolescence.
Lord of the Flies is sometimes criticized for a pessimistic idea of human nature. Do you see it as pessimistic about humanity? Everyone always wants to bring up those six boys from Tonga in the 1960s who survived a shipwreck together for 15 months.
They do. It’s interesting, you know, just about the Tonga thing: a.) they were all mates before they went; b.) they had escaped together; and c.) they’d been socialized in a way that is completely different to the way our boys have been socialized in this book.
That’s part of what I loved about this book – it felt like a portrait of postwar Britain, without blitz shelters. It felt like a portrait of that period of confusion and hatred. I do think it’s pessimistic, but I don’t think it’s pessimistic as to human nature. It’s pessimistic as to the chaos that can erupt when a power battle ensues.
I don’t think Golding’s really writing about man in a state of nature. He’s writing about a group of boys that have been socialized in great difficulty and who are navigating each other.
There’s so many times in the book, and I hope in the show, where you can see: Oh, if he’d just taken two steps to the left or two steps to the right, everything that happens on this island wouldn’t have happened.
The miniseries premieres on CBC on Oct. 22.J. Redza/Eleven/Sony Pictures/Supplied
This is maybe a dorky question, but I was curious if these scripts were shorter than your normal one-hour scripts.
Yeah, that is a very dorky question. I love it. They were much shorter. They were 42 pages. Normally, I’d write about 50 to 52 for a BBC hour [without ad breaks], but because director Marc Munden is always so interested in visual poetry, whenever I write for Marc, his scripts tend to be shorter than most,
Yes, besides the themes of boys, Adolescence and Lord of the Flies both have strong directorial visions. We don’t see a lot of screenwriters working with directors the way you do.
I hate the term showrunner. I don’t think it’s awful that there are showrunners in this world. But I think most TV, most good TV, is a collaboration between writer and director and actors and lots of other people besides. All the directors I like to work with have auteur impulses. I think the show is better for that.
You’re currently working on four movies about the Beatles for Sam Mendes – each focusing on a different band member. Lord of the Flies is likewise four episodes from four different boys’ perspectives. Adolescence was four episodes too. What for you is the power of four?
I don’t think there is one, really. I always try to think of what the vocabulary of television can do. I think TV is one of the finest devices we have of telling stories, and yet I think that so often what people do is tell one story and break it up into parts, rather than celebrate the opportunity of those parts to create a complication.
With Lord of the Flies, there’s that ability to go: Okay, let’s see the island from Piggy’s perspective, and then let’s swerve and let’s try and understand Jack. What Golding wrote is all about empathy and lack of empathy, and so to play with the empathy game through the story felt like an extraordinary opportunity.
This interview has been edited and condensed.