Jack Thorne takes on William Golding – and you’ll never have felt so grateful to live under the rule of law, that ultimate dweeb’s charter
C
astaway stories, from Cast Away to The Martian, often make for feelgood classics. They are tales about an ingenious individual overcoming huge odds, a triumphant metaphor for the human spirit. Here’s a funny thing: castaway stories featuring large groups of people lead to the exact opposite. Forced to self-organise, they end up eating each other. The exception is Lost; I don’t know what that was about. Polar bears?
Needless to say, I like them all. So it’s exciting to see a new kid on the block – or rather an old boy. William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, about a group of British schoolboys who crash-land on a desert island, has been part of the UK curriculum for more than 60 years. I wonder if we forget the books we’re forced to study, and are obliged to rediscover them in later life. I know this story well, but am not sure I can say I fully experienced it until this striking new BBC version (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One).
Promisingly, it’s adapted by Jack Thorne. Every time a new Jack Thorne drama appears, which is no more than a couple of times a month, my writer friends wonder at his prodigious talent. Why does this man write as if he’s running out of time? As if he’s found himself in possession of the last pen on Earth? Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, This Is England, Toxic Town, His Dark Materials, The Swimmers, The Virtues and The Motive and the Cue. You saw Adolescence. Did this man put his fingers in a socket doing DIY, and now electricity pours out of them?
