Class of '07 is an Australian dark-comedy/survival series on Prime Video.
During Ridge Heights' ten-year high school reunion, something happens that leaves the former students stranded in their mountaintop school, with no power, no signals, and water all around.
Our heroes are left trying to survive this mysterious apocalypse, or 'poco', as well as being stuck in close quarters with each other.
Think Lord of the Flies meets Mean Girls plus The Afterparty.
The first season appeared on 17 March 2023. It stars Emily Browning, Megan Smart and Caitlin Stasey.
This series provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The ten-year reunion of the titular Class of '07 would be 2017. The series was released in 2023.
- The Alcoholic: Megan. She gets better.
- Age Cut: Many times over, we go between similar shots for a quick flashback to the survivors' school days.
- Alpha Bitch: Saskia was the most popular girl when the group were all in school together, with Zoe and Teresa as her sidekicks. Most other girls were bullied by her just for the hell of it, Zoe and Teresa going along with this often. As a result, almost everyone else hates her in the present.
- Alternate History: The series takes place in an alternate 2017 when an Unspecified Apocalypse floods Australia and apparently much of the world.
- Blatant Lies: Renee claims to be a doctor at the reunion, and so gets appointed de-facto medic after the pocko. Not only is she not a doctor, she seems to know less about medicine than anyone in the school, or indeed most of the viewing audience. The others later say they saw through it due to this.
- Becoming the Mask: Renee does her best to actually learn some medicine after being appointed medic.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "We need to get the radio working, figure out which berries are safe to eat, find a way to get all our IUDs out before they rot away in our uteruses."
- Butch Lesbian: Tegan is short-haired and wears fairly masculine clothing, while indicating her attraction to women once briefly.
- Butt-Monkey: While almost every character gets at least a bit of this, 9 times out of 10, when something humiliating, painful, or disgusting (or all three) is happening, it’s happening to Zoe.
- Chromosome Casting: The setting is the reunion of the titular graduating class from an all-girls' school after a decade. Given this, all the main characters on the show and supporting characters too are women (girls in the flashbacks). Male characters only appear in the flashbacks or briefly at the end during the first season.
- Cluster F-Bomb: All the girls are very foul-mouthed and profane. This is an Australian series, after all.
- Companion Cube: Saskia, who'd been in therapy, dresses up a mop as her therapist to vent about her issues.
- Cozy Catastrophe: Played with. The women have the resources, expertise and infrastructure to achieve a decent standard of living. However, they can only maintain it through hard work, diligent use of resources and keeping everyone focuses on the tasks at hand. Each crisis costs them resources and a drop in morale. When they get near the Despair Event Horizon, things start to unravel very quickly.
- Death Seeker: Amelia becomes nihilistic and loses hope in the first season finale, volunteering herself to be eaten so the others can live. It's possibly the result of her depression coming after she runs out of antidepressants. She's saved by Zoe and they sail off together instead though.
- Disproportionate Retribution: On both ends. Saskia supposedly murdering Sandy and Genevieve hiding the fact that there is a working toilet get them "sentenced" to the same punishment: having their heads shaved. Their old teacher shows up just after they’ve messily cut a chunk of Saskia’s hair off.
- Expert in Underwater Basket Weaving: Megan is an excellent violin player, but that doesn't help her much in the apocalypse. This is the specific reason given for why she’s voted to be killed and eaten when the survivors run out of food.
- Freudian Excuse: At least some of Saskia's issues and awful behavior are due to being groomed and sexually abused by an old teacher at the school and still struggling to process her trauma over it.
- Genre Shift: It starts out as a black comedy that's as light in tone as one can get for an apocalypse film, but moves into heartwarming territory as the classmates overcome the odds of survival and improve themselves. It swerves wildly more dark in the last two episodes as cannibalism enters the picture.
- Hidden Depths: Megan is really good with the violin.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Basically the plot of episode eight. After the group has eaten all of their food, they finally decide on cannibalism as the only option. So they decide to hold a vote on who gets eaten, and choose Megan at the end before Amelia volunteers in her place. This is avoided however when more survivors show up.
- Insistent Terminology: No-one misses an opportunity to remind Genevieve that she was not 'school captain', but 'caretaker school captain'.
- Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: Zoe's introduced to us giving a "Reason Why You Suck" Speech to a reality show contestant that ends with her getting pooped in the mouth by a dove — this moment goes so viral she runs off to the country and hides her phone to get away from everyone.
- In the Back: Zoe gets stabbed by Sandy this way, with the knife kept lodged in her back for some time since she can't get it at first and no one will help because they're all mad at her.
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- Saskia is right about pulling the group from a shambling mess to a semi-functional community, but she doesn't have to be such a see-you-next-Tuesday about it.
- Genevieve says to Forgettable Laura that 'everyone shits on you equally, so you'll be impartial.' Laura looks mildly insulted, but seems to agree.
- Kangaroo Court: Saskia is put on trial when she's accused of murdering Sandy (after initially they were just going to kill her), with everyone obviously biased (except Zoe and Amelia) against her. She manages to get off only barely as Zoe and Amelia shame the others to give her some due process.
- Kick the Dog: Episode four has Saskia at her worst after taking over as the de facto group leader, enforcing arbitrary grooming policies and isolating and trying to starve Genevieve for not abiding by them before trying to punish everyone in retaliation, calling Phoebe a "scholarship scab" and forcing Teresa to still gather food after getting her toe sliced off and even making a cruel joke while slapping the wound. It gets so bad that the whole group rises up against her at the end.
- Left the Background Music On: During the talent-finding montage, a classical violin solo plays in the background. That turns out to be Megan demonstrating her own talent.
- Missing Mom: Amelia's mom killed herself after having years of depression.
- Nobody Poops: Averted so explicitly that a...sample is seen on-screen.
- No Periods, Period: Averted, no shortage of menstruation in the school, and the sole moon-cup is a much-desired item.
- Odd Friendship: Between rather smart Phoebe and somewhat … less smart Renee.
- One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: Sandy became pregnant by hooking up with a man she'd met on her long ocean journey it turns out.
- Poor Communication Kills: Nearly everybody is angry with Zoe for not warning them about the coming apocalypse. As she points out, she did, but no-one paid her any attention. (Moreover, there wasn't much any of them could have done - and if they'd taken the chance to leave the reunion, they'd have drowned.) Regrettably, though, many things Zoe probably wishes she hadn't said, her fellows remember and hold against her.
- Pregnant Badass: Sandy, who's grown into a fighter, turns out to be pregnant. It doesn't stop her at all, and they don't even realize she's pregnant initially (it's early, her concealing clothes hiding the bump).
- Queer Establishing Moment: Tegan mentions briefly that while in school she still believed she'd been attracted to guys, indicating she's into women instead.
- Reformed Bully: Saskia was a huge mean girl in her teen years but claims to have changed. How true this is is up for debate as she has moments of kindness but can also be strikingly cruel and cold-hearted at times.
- The Stoner: Megan and Tegan are initially set on just getting high with nothing else as their goals. They cheerfully accept being labeled drug addicts. Both spend most of their time doing this together, joking around and frequently getting into trouble in pursuit of it.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Played for Drama as Mr. Garrity, who'd been a teacher at the school, got into "relationships" with several girls he taught, Saskia included. He would quickly drop them after graduation. It messed Saskia up deeply, with this portrayed explicitly as abusive.
- Terrible Interviewees Montage: Saskia does a series of interviews to assess the survival skills of the other women. It's not encouraging. The only one who actually would've been useful is Forgettable Laura who tries to tell Saskia she is an electrical engineer and so can help get power going but is interrupted.
- Those Two Girls: Tegan and Megan. Saskia gets them mixed up, which might be down to this trope, or might be because she doesn't care about people who aren't her, especially as Tegan and Megan aren't even the same race.
- Token Minority: The characters are mostly white, with the exceptions of a few. Teresa, Tegan, Phoebe and Megan are those with focus in the show. Megan is of East Asian descent, Phoebe, Tegan and Teresa's ethnicities aren't clear. Sandy was also the one American exchange student there with the rest being Australians. Tegan and Phoebe are both also lesbians, while the rest are straight women (so far as is shown).
- Took a Level in Badass: Sandy, it turns out, survived being shoved out to sea on a raft by Saskia, turning into a hard-edged woman who's good with a knife, returning for revenge against both her, Zoe and the rest. Prior to this she was a girly, fashion-conscious, slightly ditzy woman.
- Took a Level in Kindness: After she's accused of murdering Sandy and the others all relate how she mistreated them in the past, Saskia admits her misdeeds, seeking their forgiveness. Following this, she stops bullying and manipulating them (mostly), making a conscious effort to act nicer.
- Unspecified Apocalypse: It's not clear what happened to the planet but most of Australia at least is flooded.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Loads in episode six. Everyone gets sick from bad fish and they vomit all over (sometimes in buckets, though often not. Sandy also vomits explicitly even more-it's revealed that she's pregnant.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: Early on, Amelia points out how chaotic and unhelpful everyone is behaving for the situation they’re in and begs Saskia to take the reigns, claiming that "We need a bitch." Saskia initially refuses, saying that she doesn’t wanna be the Alpha Bitch she was in High School, but after seeing just how poorly their chances of survival are (namely, seeing Sandy selfishly ruin some of their very limited food supply), Saskia takes charge.
