Published: 2 February 2026

Lord of the Flies is the story of schoolboys stranded on a tropical island with no adults, following a deadly plane crash. In an attempt to remain civil they organise themselves, led by Ralph and supported by the group's intellectual, Piggy. But when Jack becomes more interested in hunting and vying for leadership, he soon begins to draw other boys away from the group and, ultimately, from hope to tragedy.

In its first television adaptation, Lord of the Flies is written by Jack Thorne (Adolescence, His Dark Materials, Help, Enola Holmes), directed by Marc Munden (The Mark of Cain, National Treasure, Help), and produced by Eleven (Ten Pound Poms, Sex Education).

The cast, many making their professional acting debuts, were auditioned following an open casting call, with no previous experience necessary. The process was led by multi-award-winning casting director Nina Gold (Game of Thrones, The Power of the Dog, Baby Reindeer).

David McKenna plays Piggy alongside Winston Sawyers as Ralph, Lox Pratt as Jack, Ike Talbut as Simon, and Thomas Connor as Roger. Noah and Cassius Flemyng appear as twins Sam and Eric, with Cornelius Brandreth as Maurice, and Tom Page-Turner as Bill, alongside an ensemble of more than 30 other boys playing the desert island camp's "big 'uns" and "little 'uns".

Original music for the series has been created by three of the biggest and most celebrated artists, with composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer (The White Lotus, Smile, National Treasure) creating the score, and Hans Zimmer (Dune, Planet Earth, The Lion King) alongside Kara Talve (Tattooist of Auschwitz, Prehistoric Planet) creating the series' main theme and additional music.

Commissioned by Lindsay Salt, Director of BBC Drama, Lord of the Flies (4x60) is an Eleven and One Shoe Films production backed by Sony Pictures Television for BBC iPlayer, BBC One and Stan. The executive producers are Joel Wilson and Jamie Campbell for Eleven, Jack Thorne for One Shoe Films, Marc Munden, Nawfal Faizullah for the BBC, and Cailah Scobie for Stan.

Lord of the Flies was filmed on location in Malaysia and the UK.

Watch all episodes of Lord of the Flies on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Sunday 8 February. BBC One airs the series weekly from 9pm that night.

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Meet the cast and creatives

Jack Thorne - Writer and Executive Producer

What drew you to this story?

It's something that I've always wanted to do. When we pitched it to the William Golding estate, it was very much a four-parter with the idea of writing it like a relay race. Finding that structure of telling the story via Piggy, then Jack, Simon, and Ralph. There was a very easy transition from book to screen, because of that structure.

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. 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.

It's the perfect distillation of our contemporary problem I think, in terms of looking at the male condition.

What have been the biggest hurdles in adapting the story?

There were moments where I needed to sketch in story, and trying to do that in a way which felt like Golding was sometimes very hard. But truthfully it was a joy, because I knew the book so well. As someone that adapts, so much of your job is to have ingested the book and be able to feel your way around it.

With Lord of the Flies, I knew where I need to be and that's because I've been reading the book since I was 11 years old, so I've been reading it for 35 years. It's a different relationship to any other book that I've adapted.

Hopefully in this adaptation people will understand that the complexity of the book is far greater than they usually give it credit for.

How did you feel about the visual representation of the story on-screen?

I love it. Our director Marc Munden is an astonishing artist. He doesn't think like a director, I think he almost thinks like a painter, despite the fact he's a brilliant director and can get incredible performances out of people. There is something about the way that he chooses colour, and the way that he tells the story, in space, that is so distinctive.

Marc has the ability to disappear, in terms of not making the camera the focus; there's scenes of kids playing with crabs, sand or with creepers in the water, where it has an almost documentary feel of just watching kids and how they would be on an island.

What do you hope viewers will take away from the series?

I think Golding's brilliance and complexity is often dismissed. "It's all gone Lord of the Flies" is used as shorthand for the most obnoxious things. I hope it takes people back to the book, and I hope it allows people to lean into what the book really is, in my opinion, a difficult and dangerous account of who we are and what we're capable of.

Do you think someone who has read the book will take away something different from this TV adaptation?

I think that's the whole point of adaptation so I hope so. There is a joy to seeing a person breathe as a character, think as a character and these young actors are all sensational and so committed to the parts they played. In terms of what I did, it is faithful, I think, to what he wrote, and I think Judy and the estate regard it as faithful too. It's not full of dialogue, it's very spare, and the dialogue used is a mixture of what Golding wrote and what I thought he might and where my instincts took me.

When Jack and Simon talk, all they say is taken from clues within the book, but it's an extrapolation that is probably influenced by me too but where I felt myself pushing in too much I pulled back. I didn't want to hear the voices in my head, I tried to bring out the voices in his.

I hope I've kept his magic, I consider it a huge honour to have been given this opportunity.

Marc Munden - Director and Executive Producer

How would you describe Lord of the Flies?

Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of boys between the ages of five and 12 who are marooned on a desert island and the way their behaviour towards each other, despite their attempts at organising themselves, deteriorates into anarchy. It's also a story about how innocence is corrupted.

It's also a story of the British class system - how the privileged and the entitled have grabbed power from those who are less powerful and used it to their own ends. To devastating results, in this case. It's a great insight into the way that we interact with each other, and it is universal in that respect.

How did you approach the look and feel of the series?

We discovered the look of the film quite organically. We couldn't shoot with the children after six o'clock, yet a lot of the action takes place after dark. Mark Wolf (Director of Photography) and I developed this idea of shooting day for night with an infra-red camera, which responds to the green foliage, changing it to pink and red. It has a hallucinatory feel, heightened with magical realism. The production design is attempting to reach beyond the practicalities of what the children would build and what the children live in - the spears and that the huts.

It is trying to give you something else of the world: what the boys are experiencing on the island. What is happening to those boys? We've encoded that in the design - finding bits in the natural world and in the locations which are uncanny, eery and leading us somewhere else. The sense of unease brought about by an international conflict that has resulted in the boys' evacuation from Britain is everywhere.

How difficult was it to cast the main characters? How did you get the best from them?

I had this idea in my head that Jack should be a little bit like Malcolm McDowell in If... I wanted him to have a swagger and a bullying authority that he metes out on everyone. Lox Pratt, who we finally cast is brilliant, but not at all like that. It took me a long time to dispel from my head the idea of this swaggering posh lout and come to terms with what Lox was doing, which was quite different but just as brilliant. Lox plays Jack like an entitled rock star/prince with a needy fragile ego, a boy who has never been loved.

Piggy came very late to the proceedings but now I can't imagine anyone else but David McKenna playing him. David is someone who absolutely lives for acting. He is a brilliant, natural actor - you can sense the joy in everything he plays.

Ike Talbult, who plays Simon, brought a vulnerability to the role which felt mysterious and embodied the emotional intelligence and clairvoyance of his character.

And then Ralph, the 'dull democrat'. Winston Sawyers brought a life, a spark and energy to the part. He made Ralph sharp, lively, and you so desperately want him to succeed.

There were a lot of boys who turned out to be really serious about acting. They learned that they didn't have to present a character and say the lines like you might in a school play; that the character came out of what they were doing. They watched each other act, learning from one another, and everyone tended towards a higher level of performance as a result of that.

What were the biggest challenges?

We filmed in Malaysia which has the most incredible, dense rainforest and great uninhabited islands, but that made things challenging with its impenetrability and remoteness. Also, the weather - extreme humidity and heat. Everyone was soaking wet every day, either through sea water, torrential rain or sweat.

But I think probably the most difficult thing was working with over 30 boys who'd never really done much acting before. One or two had been in professional TV productions, but most of them had only performed in school plays. We were mostly starting from square one, and that threw up all sorts of challenges, but also joyful surprises especially among the littluns who soon became oblivious to the camera.

What attracted you to the adaptation?

I'm interested in male behaviour and masculinity; a lot of my work has been about that. This adaptation feels like an analysis of the way that men in groups can behave but in the characters of pre-pubescent boys. I know there's been some counter examples, like the Tongan boys who were marooned in the South Pacific, got on marvellously and were found however many months later and they are all still friends.

But I do feel that Lord of the Flies has a tragic truth to it: the Beast is us. The tendency towards conflict and chaos is self-inflicted. I was interested in trying to unpack that.

This is my fourth collaboration with Jack Thorne, he is a brilliant artist and a good man. He totally understands the tendency to bad behaviour and he's fearless at writing it. I love that. The series is occasionally disturbing but never depressing because I hope there's always tremendous insight there, and my job is to dig into that and suffuse it deeply in the grammar of the piece.

What do you hope audiences will take from the series?

Hopefully people will go on an adventure and be immersed in the island. Then, as the society in the story breaks down, hopefully the audience will be challenged, emotionally wrung out but also enlightened. There is a tremendous amount of love in the portrayal of these vulnerable young boys.

Winston Sawyers (Ralph)

What can you tell us about the character of Ralph?

I think he's quite charming, humble, and a little bit goofy at times. He's the protagonist and he's quite a nice character, he gets along with a lot of people. A lot, but not all. He leads of the groups of boys.

What happens to Ralph through the story?

During the story Ralph is quite constant. He starts off pretty good, nice, kind - he's a leader. And then as the story goes on, he loses friends and loses people in his camp. I think he still stays with the same agenda, he doesn't want to join the bad guys. Ralph is quite rooted in who he is and what he believes in. At the end of the story, he's traumatised, beaten, bruised, and he's essentially just broken - but he survives.

What's Ralph relationship with Jack like?

Ralph and Jack have quite an interesting relationship. At first, they're both leaders and they work together in some ways. Eventually, they fall apart because they're both alphas. Jack has his beliefs and ideology, and Ralph has different ones. They start as friends, but they realise that they're kind of a threat to each other, like for power. And obviously at the end they absolutely hate each other. I think Jack hates Ralph more than Ralph hates Jack. They're quite similar, but I think Jack is more aggressive. It's like a love/hate relationship, they get along a little bit, but not enough.

What is Ralph's relationship with Piggy like?

They're really good together. They're the perfect combo because Piggy has all the brains and all the ideas, and Ralph has the leadership skills. Ralph is like a vessel for Piggy's ideas, thoughts and contributions. They work together, like really good friends.

What's is Ralph relationship with Simon like?

Ralph and Simon have really nice conversations sometimes. I enjoyed filming those scenes. I think Ralph feels sorry for Simon because he gets bullied by Jack, even though they're supposed to be friends. Ralph just hears Simon out, they talk a lot.

Simon sees everything from a bird's eye view. He's not oriented around a certain group. Simon can see what's going wrong, and that's why even though he is friends with Jack, he still chooses to go with Ralph. I think Simon also symbolises hope or civilisation. Once he goes, everything just completely falls apart from there. He's significant to the story.

What do you think Ralph symbolises?

I guess justice. Ralph almost sacrifices himself in the name of justice because he knows what's right. He sees what happens when he doesn't intervene, they go to the other camp and join Jack for a little while, then he sees bad things happen. He's very consistent in who he is and what he believes in.

What are Ralph's weaknesses?

I think he's similar to me. He's quite emotional. I think he also needs to learn how to forgive more. Like, if something disastrous happens, you can't really forgive that, but if the signal fire goes out or something like that, you have to understand and be more forgiving. I think everyone can learn to be more forgiving because then it just makes everyone happier.

What did you think about when you were doing the more emotional scenes?

I thought about 'why are these people trying to hurt them?', things like that. There's a lot of different things that go into it. And, although this isn't 'thinking', breathing helped me a lot. If I just calm down and breathe, that lets everything just come out.

How did you approach doing stunts?

I really enjoyed them, I thought they were pretty fun. I didn't get to do many though, it was mostly fighting scenes. The producers walk you through safety, obviously, because you don't want to get hurt. They explain the scene and what you're doing. Then you rehearse until you really get it in your system. You don't use actual wood spears or stones, you use rubber ones which look like the real things, which still could hurt but we were obviously careful.

What was it like filming in a tropical location?

I loved Malaysia. I loved my beach - I guess Ralph's beach - in Langkawi. It's so nice because it was such an open space. I feel like it's completely different to a regular film, I used to think 'how could anyone ever act on a set?', because often it's all green screen. I know it's acting, I know you have to imagine things, but at the same time, I prefer having real things there. So Lord of the Flies was a great experience, because everything was there in real life. You feel the breeze, hear the birds, and the insects - which are super loud as well. I think it made everything feel more real, in general, and that really helped get into the scene.

How did the costume and make-up inform your performance?

Costume and make-up helped me because I realised how old all the clothing is. I felt, as I said with the nature and setting, like you're in the jungle - like you are in the 1950s because you're wearing these clothes.

What was your favourite scene to shoot?

My favourite scene is definitely one of the first things in episode one - the swimming pool scene with Piggy, because it's so beautiful. It's like the perfect pool and it's pretty big as well. The characters have just met and then they just going swimming together, or at least Ralph does.

David McKenna (Piggy)

What can you tell us about Piggy?

Piggy is the voice of reason within the group. He is, I would say, the responsible one who wants to keep everything calm and have rules. A lot of the boys go feral when they get stranded on the island. They just want to run around hunt, kill and make food. Piggy's the one who tells everyone that we have to have rules and be calm. It doesn't end well for him though, because the boys don't react well to that.

What was your audition like?

I loved it. I did a self-tape, where I had to say if I were stranded on a desert island, who would I want to be stranded with and why? I said I would want to be stranded with the West End cast of Les Mis, because, you know, who else? Then they called me back, and it was another self-tape. That time I read one of the scenes for Piggy, then I had a Zoom meeting, then they brought me in in-person and I met a few other boys. We went in and all read a group scene together. The last audition was in front of Nina Gold and Jack Thorne. About a week later I got a call to say I'd booked the job!

What did you learn about acting from the experience?

Marc [Munden] taught me a lot about acting. He would explain to me how it needs to be a little more natural and just how you would do it regularly, rather than when you're on stage where it's very dramatic and exaggerated. Marc taught me how to be very natural and I really appreciated that.

What was a typical day like on the shoot?

On a typical day we would get picked up from the hotel in the van with our chaperones, and drive to the resort world where production was set up. When we got there we'd put our costumes and the makeup on. We would get on a boat that would take us to beach, kind of like an island. We would shoot and then we'd go back to the hotel, and do it all again the next day.

Is there any of David in Piggy?

Absolutely, I think there's a lot. I'm very like Piggy. I like to think I'm responsible but I'm not as much as he is. I can have a laugh and a little bit of a muck-about, but still be responsible in a way. I feel like we are quite like each other.

What can you tell us about Piggy's relationship with Ralph?

I think it's a complicated friendship. At the beginning of the story, when they first meet, Piggy admits to Ralph that the bullies at school always called him Piggy. Ralph promises not to tell, but then he ends up telling everyone. At the beginning Piggy is a bit 'off' with Ralph, but as the story continues they go through a lot together and they really become really close.

What is Piggy's relationship with Jack like?

Piggy's relationship with Jack is not good from the beginning. Jack meets Piggy and immediately judges him and starts picking on him. I don't know if Jack's doing this intentionally, but he would try to be friends with Ralph when he knows that Ralph is Piggy's only thread to hold on to, and then Jack just really goes against Piggy. Jack ends up ordering for Piggy to be killed - sorry, spoiler alert! They don't like each other.

What's Piggy's relationship with Simon?

Piggy's relationship with Simon is a bit of a weird one because I don't think Piggy's that fussed by him. But Ike [Talbut] and I, we have a lovely scene together where we're walking up a hill and singing together. Piggy and Simon have that little connection of both being outcasts on the island. But I feel like the first thing for Piggy is that Simon is friends with Jack… and Piggy's not fussed with anyone who's friends with Jack. Piggy has a connection to Simon, but I feel like they both don't really realise it.

What can you tell us about Piggy's moments of music in the series?

There is a little bit of singing in the series from myself and Ike [Talbut]. There was this performer called Groucho Marx in the '50s, he sang all these comedy songs. There are loads of films featuring him, and Marc [Munden] had me watch those films in prep for the shoot. They were very good, I enjoyed them. In the story, Piggy has obviously picked up on Groucho's comedy songs and starts singing them to himself when he walks around the island.

What can you tell us about your costume?

I love my costume. It started off as shorts with braces, t-shirt and this really nice red jumper. Eventually, Piggy would use it as a pillow. I had a windbreaker at the beginning, which when we were filming was really hot, it was roasting. Then Piggy uses his windbreaker as a mattress - he'd make a bed out of his clothes basically, it was a really nice touch that he does that. By the end he's just wearing shorts and a vest, that's all he has left. The boys start off with these really clean clothes, they have their ties, jackets and stuff, but by the end they're all ripped and they're shirtless running around. It's a big change.

What would you like viewers to take away from the series?

I would like the audience to take away from Lord of the Flies that you can work together. I feel like that's what Piggy would say as well. It can work out if people just listen - and listen to everyone's ideas rather than that one person who everyone idolises. In the case of Lord of the Flies, that's Jack. Everyone idolises him because he is smart and he's a leader. Whereas, if we listen to what everyone has to say, it could have all worked out fine.

What advice would you have for children who would like to know more about acting?

Anyone can do acting, no matter where you're from or your background. I'm very grateful for this experience and will remember it forever. I've made lifelong friends on it.

Lox Pratt (Jack)

How would you sum up the series?

I think it represents a lot about boyhood and how a lot of boys just want to have fun. When the rules aren't there, they will push the limits because there is that constant alpha male strutting going on between all the boys. It's different for everybody, but I think it's a lot about the way that boys and humans work, and just boyhood in general.

How did you get into the character of Jack?

I think putting myself into Jack helps quite a lot, even though most people wouldn't say I'm super like him. There are things you can take from personal experience and use in the scene, things that have happened for you and the emotions you feel. One thing that I've discovered is it's quite tricky to show an emotion without it looking fake when you're not actually feeling it. I think that's what all the great actors have mastered, because you don't think about how you're looking when you're feeling a specific emotion.

I needed to learn to 'put on' the character and then be able to take him off at the end of the day without taking any of that negative energy home, because otherwise I'd have ended up quite sad. So I think switching into him as soon as they've said action is quite a good technique because it doesn't mean you've carried any of that for any time you don't need to. That's where I settled myself, I think.

What did you enjoy most about playing Jack?

I think my character is just completely taking charge of the situation because that's just what he does. He is directing Piggy quite a lot because I don't think he has much respect for him in any scene. But I really enjoyed playing Jack because he's kind of unpredictable.

What did you find challenging about playing Jack?

I think he had a lot of rough edges and a very tricky background. He's very narcissistic, arrogant, and condescending, and he knows that he's the best at everything. Deep down he's quite a scared little guy. He lashes out quite easily. Those are all things that are quite hard, but also quite fun to play. It's fun to be able to do that and know that you're not actually hurting anyone, and know that you're not going to get told off afterwards. I found that quite tricky, but it was totally fine in the end and I had a lot of fun. I'm very, very happy that I got to do it.

What do you hope viewers takes away from the series?

When I was chatting to Marc [Munden] in rehearsals, he wanted the audience to see that the world is full of Jacks, and that things don't work if there are just Ralphs. Ralph is interesting because he's a good leader, he prioritises the right things, whereas Jack doesn't but he is exciting. People think Jack is more exciting than Ralph, and that's why everyone goes to Jack eventually. I think that people don't go to the side that's doing necessarily the right thing, but they go to the side that's going to give them a bit more excitement.

Ike Talbut (Simon)

Do you feel like you have anything in common with Simon?

Oh, so much. I don't have abusive parents like Simon does, but I have a connection with Simon. I don't know how to describe it. I think of things, or I used to think of things in a similar way that Simon does. I used to be shy and watching the floor when talking. I'm a lot less shy now and a lot louder, which has been good for my career but less peaceful for my parents.

How would you describe Simon's character?

Other people can't see things the way Simon does. He's got a foresight of what's going to happen. He's in touch with his spiritual side, he watches before he talks. Simon just witnesses everything more and from that stance of knowledge he just knows what's going to happen. People call him out for that and make accusations of 'battiness'.

Simon has some of the more unusual scenes like when he hears the voice of 'the beast', what was it like to film those?

The movements were really weird, like a dance. It was fun to see the prosthetics, the pig's head and the dead pilot. It was cool to see how much effort was being put into the production.

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