Credit: Netflix

Notes from the Last Row, based on Juan Mayorga’s Spanish play El chico de la ultima fila, is undoubtedly one of the darkest Netflix offerings of June, with equal parts unease and intrigue. So, if you want another thriller to scratch the itch once you complete the K-drama, tune into The Glory, also streaming on Netflix.

Notes from the Last Row follows Heo Mun-ho, a disillusioned literature professor and failed novelist whose dormant creative ambitions are reborn when he discovers a mysterious engineering student in the last row of his lecture hall called Lee Kang, who has an untapped, innate talent for writing.

What begins as a desire to groom Kang soon evolves into an obsession, transforming the dynamic into something brutally sinister where the lines between fiction and reality blur.

The Glory follows Moon Dong-eun, who, once having been relentlessly bullied in childhood, dedicates her entire life to scheming the destruction of her bullies. Driven by the severe physical and psychological trauma she endured in her high school, Dong-eun becomes an elementary teacher to get close to her abusers and systematically orchestrate their downfall.

Although Notes from the Last Row is set in an academic environment and The Glory is in a school-based revenge setting, they have stronger connections than they might appear on the surface. Both are built on a foundation of meticulous, cold-blooded psychological manipulation, making them companion thrillers in a way, with the protagonists also sharing strings of similarities.

While Notes from the Last Row captures Heo Mun-oh’s evolution from a professor to an observer who lives vicariously through Kang’s writing, The Glory’s Dong-eun watches and observes her former bullies from the shadows.

Likewise, the protagonists are way smarter and more calculating than the people they seem to target. Dong-Eun plays a literal and metaphorical game of Go, carefully putting the bullies into situations that will turn them against each other. Meanwhile, Mun-oh takes a psychological approach, encouraging Kang’s writing and influencing the actions of the people on paper, who are very much real.

Neither of these shows is an action thriller; instead, they are psychological pressure cookers, in which protagonists weaponise the past and justify their actions, believing they’re trying to fix perceived failures from their respective pasts by exerting total control over their current environment.

Although the premises inherently differ, that adds to the USP of each watch. So, if you’re done with Notes from the Last Row, go for The Glory already.