Class of ’07 Season 1 Recap

This review of the Prime Video series Class of ’07 Season 1 contains no spoilers.

High school reunions are such a uniquely horrific concept that I’m surprised it’s taken this long for anyone to use one as a backdrop for the end of the world. But it really is a brilliant idea. Surviving the apocalypse is hard enough. It seems almost impossible to do with the people you hated in school and have avoided for a decade.

Class of ’07 season 1 recap and plot synopsis

This is the catch of class 07A Prime video Survival comedy that churns out gross, gross laughs and jaw-dropping brutality with all the spiteful enthusiasm one might imagine a gang of 28-year-olds to indulge in after being stranded in the remains of their old all-girls high school. The cause of the disaster is some kind of vague climate catastrophe that cracks the ground and water squirts through the cracks. Soon everything is flooded and the old campus becomes a floating island from which escape seems impossible and survival – at least for most – increasingly unlikely.

Emily Browningknown from things like the Tom Hardy Kray twins movie Legend And American gods, leads the cast as Zoe, who runs from a period of self-imposed isolation following a reality show debacle to warn the rest of the girls of the impending disaster. However, no one listens, partly because of Zoe’s ongoing toxicity and partly because she has a reputation for overdoing it, so she gets drunk and dances the night away until the old “finger bank” sinks underwater, followed by much of the building.

This leaves the participants of the reunion on their own. Needless to say, her charisma is what drives the storyline, so it’s only a good thing that we have a wide range of funny actors playing different roles here. Zoe’s former best friend Amelia (Megan Smart), who disappeared from high school earlier this year, is apparently hiding a lot about the cause of her sudden disappearance and her life today. Saskia (Caitlin Stasey, a standout) is the former snooty bully who’s reinvented herself as mature and tolerant — but for how long? Picky former school captain Genevieve (Claire Lovering) wants to be the leader. Scholarship holder Phoebe (Stephen Tisdell) gets annoyed the most about sitting with all the rich girls who were given all the things they had to work for. And drug-loving Joker girlfriend Megan (Chi Nguyen) and Tegan (Bernie van Tiel) are too high to have really figured out what’s going on, and stay that way long enough to further diminish everyone else’s chances of surviving, especially since the group’s “doctor” Renee (Emma Horn), is actually a nail technician.

This is all funny though class 07 knows it must be more than fun to stick through eight episodes, even if they’re only half an hour each, so both the script and the performances have a little more depth and nuance than the archetypes suggest. There’s enough shared history, guarded secrets, and unaddressed trauma to keep the interpersonal plots as compelling as the stuff from the end of the world, and it’s full of character without letting the obviously ample budget do too much heavy lifting on its own . A nostalgia-baiting soundtrack helps conjure up a recent era and stirs up a few emotions here and there.

Is class ’07 good?

There’s an Aussie quirk to the humor and many references that a global audience might find off-putting or confusing (you know what a Shoey is, I hope), and the short episode running times rarely leave much room for more depth in subplots and character arcs that probably do could have gotten along with that. But the show settles into a nice rhythm over time and remains entertaining throughout its run, which is more than can be said of many streaming originals these days. Those longing for the mid-2000s will probably be well served here, and worth a look if you think so Yellow jackets needs more laughs, right The Lord of the Flies needs more women and drugs.

What do you think of Class of ’07 Season 1? Comment below.

You can watch this series with a Prime Video subscription.

Additional reading:

• Will there be a Class of ’07 Season 2?
• Class of ’07 Season 1 Episode 1 Summary