Lord of the Flies

Netflix

When the co-creator of Adolescence shows up with a new series on Netflix, you’re going to want to sit up and take notice. And while this new series has practically the same sky-high critic scores as that series, audiences are…not on board, it would seem.

The new show, from Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne, is Lord of the Flies, a retelling of the famed story about children surviving a plane crash and attempting to establish a coherent island community. It does not go great.

The show, however, is rated as very great by critics. It has a certified fresh 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, just shy of the 97% of Adolescence, which went on to win multiple Emmys and become one of Netflix’s most-watched series ever.

That seems unlikely to happen with Lord of the Flies. The show debuted at #4 on Netflix’s top 10 list, behind the out-for-a-while Man on Fire. Obviously, it’s possible that word of mouth spreads, but so far, there is a wide gap between reviewers and early viewers of the show. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is a rotten 51%. It’s an okay-not-great 6.6/10 on IMDB, well below Adolescence’s 8.1/10, extremely good in the context of that site.

So, who’s right? Well, I am probably biased as…a critic who is on Rotten Tomatoes, but I quite liked it. No, I do not think it is in the same league as Adolescence, though it does share one thing in common, fantastic performances from young actors, not just actors playing young, which we so often see in television or film. There’s a standout performance from Jack, the main “villain,” who is played by Lox Pratt, where it seems pretty clear why he recently landed the role of Draco Malfoy in the HBO Harry Potter series. In a recent interview, he said he probably would stop playing villains after that, though someone may want to tell them that’s probably going to be at least ten years from now, given the length that show will run.

I think it’s pretty great. I do understand how complaints could be that it’s rather slow-moving, at least for the first pair of episodes. It was also a risk to focus on individual characters for each episode. Also, people may just not like seeing…the brutal murder of children, and can’t get past that aspect of it, however core to the entire concept it may be.

I certainly don’t think this show will be for everyone, and I can understand at least some level of the critic/audience split, but I would still recommend it for the performances alone. Jack Thorne really knows how to find young talent.

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