Where was Lord of the Flies filmed?

Jack Thorne is the screenwriter who seemingly never sleeps, with recent credits including The Hack, Toxic Town and that little-known show Adolescence. Now, he's turned his attention to literary classic Lord of the Flies – and, in an interview with Deadline, Thorne explained both the "similarities and the differences" between his latest work and the Netflix super hit.

"We were working on them at the same time, and we shot them the same summer," he said. "The only difference is that Adolescence didn't have a very long edit process."

He continued: "They both definitely fed into each other – particularly, a lot of Lord of the Flies fed into Adolescence – but it is about a different period of time. The difference between boys aged 10 and 12 compared to 13 and 14 is huge.

"All the boys in Flies are negotiating the people they're going to become, whereas Jamie has made decisions about the person he is when we meet him in Adolescence. So there are similarities, but there are vast differences."

While the book has been adapted before across a range of media, this marks the first time it's been turned into a TV series. And Thorne has been keen to remain faithful to the source material.

"I hope we've sounded every note of his wonderful, wonderful text," he said during a Q&A.

It also happens to be Thorne's favourite book – so viewers can rest assured he's approached it with the utmost care.

"I think the way [William] Golding writes the book is with such care and love for all his boys – possibly excluding Roger," Thorne told Radio Times. "And as a screenwriter, being able to show that love, not by necessarily giving Jack some gooey scene in which he cries and talks about his feelings, but by letting you understand the logic of his brain.

"So I felt like that's what TV could do with this story, and I'm really pleased that we’ve been able to tell it that way. And I'm so proud of the young actors. It is a show that's told in silence more than words — and that's because of the enormity of their performances."

Read more:

• Lord of the Flies writer pushes back against 'anti-white' criticisms – "Ralph isn’t the hero"
• Lord of the Flies review: Jack Thorne's BBC adaptation is a glorious reminder of the novel's power

Like the book, the series follows a group of boys who, after a plane crash, must survive together on a tropical island without any adults.

With that in mind, the production demanded stunning locations – places that could serve as both the paradise the boys initially believe they've found, and the increasingly hellish landscape it becomes as their civility collapses.

Thankfully, the series delivers on that front, with Thorne's adaptation shot almost entirely on location in a breathtaking part of the world.

But where exactly was production filmed? Read on for everything you need to know about where Lord of the Flies is set — and where it was shot.

Where is Lord of the Flies set?

It's never made clear exactly where Lord of the Flies takes place.

Set in the 1950s during a fictional global war, it follows a group of boys who are on board a plane, being evacuated. When the plane crashes and the pilot is killed the boys are left alone on an island in the Pacific Ocean.

Exactly which island this is is never named in either the book or the TV series.

Where was Lord of the Flies filmed?

Lord of the Flies was filmed almost entirely on location in Malaysia.

Speaking at a recent screening and Q&A for the series, executive producer Joel Wilson said the series was filmed "very far" from the nearest town or city.

"I was an avid fan of Lost,", Wilson said, "and I watched the making of that, and effectively they're standing in a car park in Hawaii, with their backs to the car park, shooting into the jungle.

"And we took the opposite approach. We looked at lots of different locations, and then we carefully selected the least practical. So, we were trekking into the jungles for an hour at a time, and David was often carried or pushed in his chariot, or in particularly difficult terrain. So we were shooting in very inaccessible, inhospitable places."

Director Marc Munden said that throughout the filming process, "everyone was soaked to the skin every day, either through sweat or sea water or torrential rain".

"But it was a lot of fun as well," he added. "The boys really enjoyed it."

On filming with a cast of entirely child actors, Munden said it was "quite chaotic on set", but that it was "brilliant, beautiful chaos".

"We only had six hours a day to film with the kids," he added. "So after the first couple of days, we were sort of twiddling our thumbs, and I thought, I love these coconuts, let's film some coconuts.

"And every day we had coconut time, basically, and if we weren't filming coconuts we were filming birds or crabs or we're capturing the sea, sort of swooping into the sea and things - which developed out of coconut time every afternoon."

Meanwhile Wilson said of the tents the child actors were staying in: "At first we were told that it would be better for them to acclimatise and not have air conditioning, and then we realised that was not a good idea. So, we got air conditioning. We had very few cases of sunburn, but we had lots of people with umbrellas and there was an awful lot of sunscreen."

Watch our Radio Times Writers' Room interview with Jack Thorne below:

Lord of the Flies is available to stream in full now on BBC iPlayer. The first episode will air at 9pm on BBC One on Sunday 8th February.

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