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.
The perpetually grinning Ha is in no way intimidated by the strict social order at Jooshin, where the lower-class scholarship students are identified by different-coloured ties.
Ri-an is so powerful that school assembly does not end until he gets up and leaves, with everyone following behind him.
Jae-i has just spent the last three months in America. Upon her return, the quartet meet at a racetrack, where Jae-i challenges Ri-an to a supercar race, with the loser granting the winner’s wish. Jae-i prevails on the track and her wish is to break up with Ri-an without a fuss.
To the horror of the rest of the student body, the cocky Ha inserts himself in this quartet, most dramatically during a game of truth or dare at a party when he marches right up to Jae-i and French kisses her.
Throughout seven episodes stuffed with plenty of filler, Hierarchy invites us to ponder who might be behind In-han’s death, as well as who is responsible for the blackmail messages that Jae-i keeps receiving.
Simple stories alone are not an impediment to a show’s value as entertainment – there are plenty of K-dramas that could do with losing a subplot or two. The substance of those stories and the charisma of their characters are what count and, on both counts, Hierarchy falls short.
Hierarchy is also the latest in a string of shows to start out apparently critical of chaebol before sending out some very mixed signals.
Besides the confident and attractive Ha, all the other scholarship students in the school are obsequious and far less attractive. Rather than victims, they are painted as weak and unworthy of stepping out of the shadow of the Jooshin elite.
As the story progresses we are invited to empathise with the chaebol kids who lord it over the school, and who it turns out are not the villains they were initially portrayed as.
Shades of grey are fine, but what we get here is another insincere show that pretends to be commenting on social inequality before revealing itself to be yet another glorification of the rich and beautiful elite.
Moral quandaries aside, Hierarchy’s greatest crime is being downright dull. Remove the fake social commentary and you are left with a high-school drama that feels half-baked and artificial, a revenge thriller lacking in tension and surprise, and a romance that never comes close to getting off the ground.
Simply put, with summer before us, there are probably better things to do than going back to school.
Hierarchy is streaming on Netflix.
