A group of women who went to high school together end up stranded in the wilderness, must consider cannibalism in order to survive, are eventually pushed to the edge and throw an end-of-the-world bacchanal where all hell breaks lose, all the while scored by a soundtrack that alternates between great songs of a certain era and a score of women vocalizing hauntingly. Sound familiar?

This is not Yellowjackets but rather Class of ’07, an eight-episode apocalypse-comedy series out of Australia available on Prime Video. I admittedly hesitate to compare it to Yellowjackets as its tonally and structurally vastly different. While I’d call both horror-comedy, Yellowjackets is heavier on the former, while Class of ’07 is heavier on the latter. In fact, Class of ’07 is absurdist in its approach to a survival story, a loud, gross, goofy, fun, and often surprising show that isn’t trying to be as serious or scary as Yellowjackets and yet still finds little pockets of compelling and deep character- and relationship-driven storytelling. Yes, it’s very different than Yellowjackets. And it manages to stand on its own quite well. But I’m interested in those surface-level commonalities they share, both because I think it’s interesting to consider how little tweaks of tone and scope can shift a familiar premise and because I want more people to watch Class of ’07 so that it might get a second season and am hoping a Yellowjackets comp will do the trick.

Class of ’07 kicks off with a ten-year high school class reunion at an all-girls Catholic private school. Many of these women haven’t seen each other for years and immediately have to confront old expectations and assumptions about them as well as conflicts that never had much closure. That’s all awkward and uncomfortable enough, but things get much more dire with a catastrophic environmental disaster leads to a massive flood that turns their school property into an isolated island detached from any humanity that might have survived the flood. The women now don’t have to merely reckon with their pasts but also find a way to survive together, despite only really knowing each other’s teenage selves.

So, in a way, the narrative structure is like a reverse Yellowjackets. Instead of adult women reconciling with their shared past trauma of being teens who survived against impossible odds and alternating between those present day stories and their stranded past, Class of ’07 instead sees adult women stranded in the present, with little pops of flashback into their past, when they were surviving a different beast entirely: high school.

While very much an ensemble cast, our point of entry into the group is Zoe (Emily Browning), who has been off the grid for a while following an embarrassing stint on a Bachelor-like reality program. She spends much of the season attempting to reconnect with and get answers from her once-bff Amelia (Megan Smart) who left school abruptly for reasons unbeknownst to Zoe.

Even though they’re all adults now, the drama and conflict that festers between these women is of the high school variety. It’s like the intensity of the apocalypse (which they all start referring to as the “pocko”) suddenly makes them all revert to their teenage selves — some of them quite unwillingly. My favorite arc of the season belongs to reformed bully Saskia (queer actress Caitlin Stasey!), who is forced to return to her mean girl ways by Amelia who thinks the group needs a tough leader in order to survive. By returning to her past self, Saskia has to give up a lot of herself, and the more we learn about her past, the more she’s complicated beyond just your textbook queen bee stocktype. It’s fascinating to watch these adult characters return to old dynamics, old patterns. Stasey gives a great comedic and dramatic performance as Saskia, who brings out some of the most extreme feelings in most of the girls, acting almost like a mirror to the past.

Flashbacks are employed expertly and very minimally. Most of the time, they’re just quick, almost montage-like cuts to mostly wordless moments between younger versions of the characters. They’re done so well that they don’t really need dialogue to both narratively contextualize and also conjure emotion. Repetition of certain sequences evokes even more substance and feeling.

As far as queerness goes, only one character — Tegan (played by queer hip hop artist BVT) — makes explicit reference to being queer and only does so in one quick line in the backhalf of the season. Tegan’s arc is mostly centered on her everlasting friendship with Megan and how it has been fueled by alcohol and drugs. There are not technically overtly queer storylines in the sense of coming outs or romances, but it’s hard not to feel like Class of ’07 is deeply queer in its bones, especially because of the queer folks in its cast. In addition to BVT and Caitlin Stasey (who I loved as a queerleader in All Cheerleaders Die), there’s also queer content creator Emma Horn, whose character Renee I could easily see being queer. While many of the show’s themes regarding reconciling the differences between who you used to be and who you’ve become can of course be relatable to all sorts of people, there is something queer about these tensions and about the intense bond between some of these girls in their youths and their eventual undoings — as cataclysmic as an apocalyptic tidal wave. There’s actually almost no consideration of men at all on the show. The homosocial environment of all-girls school ends up replicated by the dysfunctional commune they create to survive. The sense I get is that basically any of these characters could eventually make their queerness known and it would track.

Class of ’07 feels a bit like a mashup between Pen15 (absurdist comedy and adult actors embodying teenage behaviors), Yellowjackets (“pocko” vibes, a dual timeline, and yes cannibalism), and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (finding humor in strange places and characters reckoning with their painful pasts). There are literal end-of-the-world stakes, but it’s also riotously funny — and gross. Like, so very gross. And I mean that as a compliment! Class of ’07 sure does not shy away from the grotesque bodily realities of living without proper food, plumbing, or consistent electricity. But even amid all the shit, piss, puke, blood, dirt, grime, and over-the-top humor, Class of ’07 consistently finds grounding in real stories about friendship, growing up, power, trauma, and guilt. Many times, I found myself laughing hard at a joke and then suddenly choked by something devastating and real. That tonal whiplash works well on a show like this. At one point, the women literally read letters written by their teen selves to their future selves, and there’s so much meat to each of their reactions.

The nature of Class of ’07‘s absurdist comedic tone makes it so that you never have to get too hung up on the logistics of their survival. The series does come up with a playful explanation as to why the girls keep wearing makeup and doing their hair. Without having to focus on some of these more plot-based details though, it frees the narrative up to instead have all of the mystery and uncertainty live within its relationship dynamics. Finally learning why Amelia left school is a gut punch, because it’s a gut punch for Zoe. And Class of ’07 doesn’t make these kinds of interpersonal conflicts and backstories too neat either. Zoe is, frankly, an annoying protagonist, but the writers know she is. When she acts selfishly or immaturely, other characters call her out on it. Saskia’s history of abuse at the hands of a male teacher at their school doesn’t turn into some overly simplified “hurt people hurt people” storyline. It explains some of her behavior but not all of it. She was mean. She tortured other girls and not just after her own personal torment. None of the characters nor their relationships slot into easy categories, and everyone’s flaws are explored but never downplayed.

(Honestly, the biggest lingering question I have is why Zoe went on the reality dating show, because it doesn’t really track with anything we learn about the character and ultimately feels like someone just wanted to open the series with a Bachelor parody, and I suppose that’s fine, it’s nothing to get too nit-picky about, but Bachelor/Bachelorette parodies are so common these days — even in literature! — that it stands out when it’s not done particularly well. Read Patricia Wants To Cuddle or How To Be Eaten for more effective comedy on this front.)

The show is very watchable in one or two sittings, and it’s the perfect way to pregame Yellowjackets season two, which premieres on Friday. Class of ’07 makes it explicit that surviving high school sometimes feels just as brutal and chaotic as surviving a disaster event.

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