Jack Thorne on 'remarkably tender' Lord of the Flies

Jack Thorne first read Lord of the Flies as a child. He didn't study it in school but received a copy from his mum who was a substitute English teacher.

The novel was stamped on the inside: Portway English Department.

"I quite like the fact that my Lord of the Flies copy was a stolen copy," he notes with a touch of laughter.

The story by William Golding, about young boys stranded on an island who descend into bloody chaos, left a "profound scar" on Thorne and, years later, he's adapting it into a four-part BBC series.

While Thorne notes that the title of the book has become a shorthand for the "evilness of boys," the story and its characters are far more complex, he says.

The screenwriter explains that, for him, the story is "a remarkably tender portrait" of young boys. He adds that it is about the moments where we lose ourselves and become stuck in a situation we can't control.

Thorne has become known for penning complex portrayals of masculinity and violence, having won an Emmy and Golden Globe for his series Adolescence,with the series being made available to show in schools across the UK to help open discussions around toxic masculinity and online radicalisation.

And with his new series, Thorne hopes to develop our understanding of the boys' behaviour in Lord of the Flies, showing their cruelty as well as their fragility.

Director Marc Munden says he hopes those watching the new series get an understanding of how things can "go badly wrong" and how fallible people can be.

"The world's still full of those confused little boys creating chaos in the world in the guise of men and hopefully this is a little microcosm of that which helps us understand that," he adds.

Nobel Prize winner William Golding's Lord of the Flies follows a group of school boys being evacuated from an unnamed war, whose plane crashes on an island with no adults. After an attempt at creating a makeshift civil society, the boys turn on and hunt each other.

Thorne says the story made sense to him in a "completely different" way as an adult as he started to better understand the boys' behaviour.

When Thorne first read the book, lead character Jack, instigator of hunts on the island, was the "epitome of evil".

"He was everything I hated about the boys around me," he explains.

But as an adult, Thorne sees him as a complicated boy, "he is as loving as he is hateful".

Thorne hopes to communicate this complexity in the new series, with each episode named after and offering insight into a different character's perspective as chaos progresses on the island.

Thorne describes this as a "relay race" between the leads, starting with Piggy (David McKenna), the intellectual voice of reason in the group, then to Jack (Lox Pratt), the leader of the choir boys, to Simon (Ike Talbut), a sensitive, independent boy, and finally Ralph (Winston Sawyers) the group's elected leader.

He notes that Jack's episode in particular is incredibly important to our understanding of the story - and that conveying his complexity "allows the story to flower in a completely different way because you are literally looking into the eyes of someone that is fighting themselves".

Munden notes that while the insights into these characters given in each episode doesn't "excuse" their behaviour, it does help our understanding.

He hopes that with this new adaptation, anyone who once saw the story as "brutal and pessimistic" can see that there is a "lot of love" in the way Golding and Thorne write the characters.

Thorne hopes that the new series encourages kids to talk to their parents about what they're going through.

The screenwriter says that to him, a TV is like an "empathy box" that sits in the corner of a room and encourages people to speak about their problems.

"I grew up watching EastEnders with my mum - and sitting on the sofa with her afterwards and talking about it are some of the clearest memories of my childhood," Thorne says, explaining that he would often use plot lines from the show to talk to his mum about what he was "going through" in a way that felt safe.

He hopes that Lord of the Flies offers the same experience and helps young people watching navigate their way through "the most difficult period of life".

Thorne adds that it is "crucial" to revisit and understand Golding's story as we navigate uncertain times and try to "stop our own cruelty from emerging".

Munden says there is a "tragic truth" in the way the society in the story can tip over into chaos.

The director adds that he tried to create a "sense of unease" in the series and feels the context of a war going on in the background of the novel is "a metaphor for what we're all experiencing, which is somewhere not that distant from us, the potential for conflict is just on the edge".

You can watch Lord of the Flies at 21:00 GMT on BBC One on Sunday 8 February or on iPlayer the same day.