Lord of the Flies meets Alive in this gripping 90s-themed survival tale

The Nineties are back in fashion. As confirmation, here is Yellowjackets (now airing on ITV1 after debuting on Sky Atlantic in 2021), a drama that begins in 1996 and stars Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci, two actresses as synonymous with the decade as bootcut jeans.

It is a deliciously dark thriller, featuring Ricci with a bubble perm that makes her look like one of the Golden Girls. But the black comedy is woven into a story of genuine horror. A plane carrying a girls’ football team crashes in the wilderness. What follows is a fight for survival. In the words of one who made it out: “A bunch of my friends died, and the rest of us starved and scavenged and prayed for 19 months until they finally found us.” And that is putting quite a gloss on things.

There are shades of Lord of the Flies and Lost here, but the most direct comparison is with Alive, which told the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes. You may remember what happened there: the survivors decided to eat the flesh of their dead friends. In Yellowjackets, they do not wait for their friends to die, but hasten things along. Sugar and spice and all things nice, eh?