The Cutprice Guignol

If you’ve been around the Guignol for any length of time (and if you haven’t, I’ve decided to take it personally), you’ll know that I have not yet stumbled across a female-led dramedy that I don’t like.

Henpocalypse, Such Brave Girls, Am I Being Unreasonable, Alma’s Not Normal, We Are Lady Parts – if you show me some women having a bad time but being fun about it, I am in. There’s been a glut of them in the last few years and it’s a genre I’ve yet to get tired of – and one that led me to stumble across 2023’s Class of ’07. Well, that, and my desperate attempt to scratch the itch of an Australian dramedy now that Deadloch seems to be over and done with, but who’s counting?

Created by Katie Anning, Class of ’07, as the title suggests, follows a group of women who attended the same Catholic school in Australia, returning to the scene of their various teenage crimes for a reunion only to find themselves stranded after an apocalyptic event leaves them trapped in their one-time school.

And, look, I didn’t even have that bad of a high school experience, but this is basically a worst-nightmare scenario in the best way possible for a comedy-drama like this one. The uniquely intimate and complicated relationship that arise between people and especially women during adolescence are intense enough as it is, but throw in ten years of brewing resentment, self-doubt, and existential crisis on top of, you know, attempting to survive an apocalypse, and you’ve got downright alchemy. The way that people both slip into their old roles and try to break out of them – occasionally in the same breath – is endlessly fun to watch, and the tension between who these people used to be and who they are now is constantly bubbling under the surface.

The real selling point for Class of ’07 is the ensemble, led by the brilliant Emily Browning who I urgently need to see in more comedy roles after this, and there’s not a weak link across this sprawling group. Steph Tisdell as Phoebe, the scholarship student who has since thrown herself in the stock market, might be my favourite, lonely and occasionally calculating as she tries to establish her new role in a place where she constantly felt like an outsider, though Sarah Krndijia nearly steals the show in her unexpected and gloriously dramatic survivalist arc.

But probably the character and the plot in this series that stuck with me most was that of Saskia (Caitlin Stasey), the former mean girl of their class who was groomed by a teacher who targeted a number of girls during his period of employment in the school. The show front-loads her less likeable qualities – her domineering nature, her brutality when it comes to the other women, the sense of responsibility she places on herself to an almost absurd degree – and slowly unravels the grooming story over the course of the season, contextualizing her behaviour in light of her trauma. Saskia is, at first, reluctant to undo the work that she put in to distance herself from the person she was once, but we see her move into the version of herself she became under the thumb of her abuser – convinced of her own isolation, self-abusing, lashing out at the people around her as well as herself. It’s really interesting to see the story framed this way, to present the impact of the abuse before the fact of it, and a bold way to tell a complex story of a survivor that does not narrow them down to a sense of sainted victimhood that many shows approach these kind of stories with.

Class of ’07 is genuinely brilliant, a fantastically complex and witty exploration of female friendship and connection against a backdrop of survivalist adventure, not to mention featuring a soundtrack of bangers that I remember from many a school disco from my own class of ’07. As ever, I’d love to hear what you thought of it, or if you’ve got any recommendations for similar shows for me to add to the watchlist, so let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via Amazon Prime)