Lord of the Flies

Netflix

Adolescence remains one of Netflix’s biggest hits in history, setting award records for its young star and putting up the second-most English language views in the streamer’s history, behind only Wednesday season 1.

While there is supposed to be a second season of Adolescence coming somehow, focused on a new cast, well before that, we have a new series that acts as its own sort of follow-up series. That would be Lord of the Flies, the adaptation of the famed book for the first time ever as a TV show, this one being four episodes long. It is created and written by Jack Thorne, who was the co-creator and co-writer of Adolescence alongside Stephen Graham.

The series hits Netflix this week, and already has a certified fresh 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Not the 97% of Adolescence, but pretty close. It’s too early for audience scores at present, but it’s worth noting that Adolescence’s were surprisingly low compared to how well-praised it was, a 74%. I mean, that’s pretty good, but hardly matches the acclaim and viewership.

Here’s the story of Lord of the Flies in case you were never forced to read it in school:

“Stranded on an island, a gang of schoolboys creates their own community - but when the rules vanish, the beast within awakens.”

Like Adolescence, this features a slate of child actors, not older actors just pretending to be children. As such, you will recognize almost none of them (Adolescence’s Owen Cooper does not appear. He’s too old, besides). However, there is young Lox Pratt as Jack, who was recently cast as Draco Malfoy in the upcoming Harry Potter series on HBO, which is a pretty big deal. I wonder if they saw early footage of him in this show during that casting. One more actor you may know is Rory Kinnear, who plays Ralph’s father here and was The Hound in Game of Thrones.

How is Lord of the Flies going to perform? That remains to be seen, but 1) a classic adaptation, 2) the co-creator and writer of Adolescence, 3) critical acclaim. The recipe is there for a potentially big hit, though obviously no one is expecting a true phenomenon like the show that preceded it. Hopefully, we’ll get some more information soon about what’s happening with Adolescence season 2, if that is still happening. I’m still not entirely convinced that needs to exist at all, but this is streaming, and this is what happens with hits even if they were planned to be one-and-done. Here, Lord of the Flies, adapting a very specific book, we are not hanging around for a season 2, especially here.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.