Review | Netflix K-drama review: Hierarchy – vacuous high school drama combines revenge and romance
- Netflix’s Hierarchy makes you think it is a social commentary on the rich-poor divide in a school, but instead falls back on K-drama tropes
2/5 stars
Lead cast: Roh Jeong-eui, Lee Chae-min, Kim Jae-won
In Hierarchy, Netflix’s latest Korean drama series, the heirs to Korea’s top chaebol – family-run corporations – rule the roost at the prestigious Jooshin High School, but the strict social order they have imposed starts to crumble following the arrival of a dashing scholarship student who does not respect the established order.
It’s hardly the most original story set around a chaebol to start with, yet Hierarchy still manages to disappoint: the promise of social upheaval comes to nothing and soon the series is veering between vacuous high-school romance and bland revenge drama.
It all begins – how else? – on a dark night with a handsome young man running away from something, only to be mown down and killed by a speeding car. We soon learn that the victim was Kang In-han, a scholarship student at Jooshin High.