Prime Video’s Australian Comedy Series, Class of 07 follows a bunch of 28-year-olds at their high school reunion as they try to one-up each other with their career paths, their achievements, their bags and even their past positions. One of their classmates, Zoe (Emily Browning) walks into the school underdressed and in a panic — “the fucking earth is cracking open and gushing everywhere” she says. But no one is listening so she gets high, dances around and ignores her former bestie’s repeated questions.
Zoe was right, the earth was gushing and now the entire area is an island while the castle-like school floats on top. It’s an apocalypse and the classmates who kinda despise each other are the only ones left.
The apocalyptic scramble starts off immediately as everyone is panicking about all kinds of random things - including a Damier bag. Everyone is scrambling for the best room, some are getting high and some are eating everything in sight. It’s chaotic. So Zoe’s former bestie, Amelia (Megan Smart) asks retired mean girl but now startup founder Saskia (Caitlin Stasey) to don her mean girl beret again and take charge of the mess. “Don’t overthink it, we need a bitch”
And so the bitch rises
It’s interesting watching the threads link to each of these women - finding out who hates who and why; who did what and why. Each of them has to navigate their high school history while stuck in the high school and forge a way forward with the girls they hate and the girls they hurt. They have to ration food, build pooping pit stalls, find electricity and do their hair. Because even in an apocalyptic world, you should never let go.
Every episode is just as chaotic as the next but don’t be swayed by the colourful set and the peppy tone of the girls - Class of 07 can get brutal and a little disgusting while balancing humour.
One thing that becomes increasingly obvious as you sit through one episode after the other is that these girls are all pretty terrible people. They are constantly looking for who to pick on and if one girl gets singled out, she’s a dart board for insults for the next couple of days. Also, the closest any of these women come to talking about their loved ones who are probably dead and floating in the flood is Teresa's (Sana'a Shaik) repeated commentary about her embryos.
As Class of 07 races towards its first season finale, a character steps up to take control of the 07 girls and as higher order is introduced, the show gets less exciting and a lot of questions may start to pop up for viewers - at least it did for me. For how long do Zoe and Amelia plan to milk their little high school puppy fight? And if Amelia is so over their friendship, why was she frantically searching for Zoe in the first episode? Why won’t anyone put Phoebe in her place? Why wasn’t Renee blamed? And why exactly did that one character get a power-up that we know is an impossible feat for them?
Class of 07’s charm is that the plot is pretty straightforward and there’s not much depth when it comes to characters — what you see is mostly what you get. Each episode runs for thirty minutes so nothing gets drawn out too long but the entire 200+ minutes runtime never quite lives up to the first three minutes of the show which was reminiscent of UnREAL’s reality TV chaos.
Class of 07 is currently streaming on Prime Video.