Jack Thorne’s new project echoes his last superhit one.
Thorne, who co-wrote Netflix hit Adolescence, has made a new adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
At a screening of the new tv series, he said that Adolescence has impacted his take on the famous tale of boys stranded on an island.
“A bit of Golding slipped into Adolescence and a bit of Adolescence slipped into Golding,” he said, per Deadline.
In show notes just released by the BBC, Thorne said, “I think, as a society, we’re having a conversation right now about boys. 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.”
Adolescence follows troubled 12-year-old boy Jamie who gets brainwashed by misogynistic content on social media and ends up committing a major crime.
Lord of the Flies follows a similar theme of “losing a generation of boys.” The book, which was published half a century ago, sees a group of young boys deserted on an island who go increasingly feral with time.
Thorne added: “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.”
The Lord of the Flies show will replace The Night Manager in the coveted Sunday night slot on BBC soon.