New to Netflix this week: The Last Bus, a Netflix Original comedy sci-fi series

An action-packed new live action sci-fi Netflix Original series, THE LAST BUS, featuring Robert Sheehan (Umbrella Academy, Misfits), Tom Basden (After Life, Plebs) and an ensemble cast of young actors, will be released on the leading subscription streaming service this Friday (1 April).

In the words of Robert Sheehan, THE LAST BUS is "funny, dramatic, suspenseful, visually delightful, incredibly watchable and above all, huge hearted," featuring an "insanely charismatic young cast." This new 10-episode eco-fable is designed for the whole family to watch together.

Produced by UK-based Wildseed Studios, this exciting new show follows a group of mismatched students on a school trip who become unlikely heroes when a robot apocalypse zaps away the rest of humanity.

The ensemble young cast in THE LAST BUS features now rapidly-rising stars Lauryn Ajufo (Boiling Point) and Moosa Mostafa (Nativity Rocks, Tim Burton's Wednesday), complete newcomers Marlie Morrelle and Phoebe De Silva, who were discovered from a school search of thousands of young people for their first acting role, together with more experienced talent including Carys John (School of Rock, Love Me, Parch), Nathanael Saleh (Mary Poppins Returns, The Letter for the King), Daniel Frogson (His Dark Materials), Lara McDonnell (Belfast, Artemis Fowl) and Curtis Kantsa (Blue Story).

THE LAST BUS has been created and written by Paul Neafcy, who was spotted by Wildseed making mobile phone films on YouTube from his bedroom. This is the third series Wildseed has worked on with Paul, following the success of Philip Human and PrankMe for a US-based SVoD service.

The series opens with the students travelling to the launch of the ‘genie orbs', a new class of robot designed to clean up the environment. When the artificial intelligence-powered orbs are introduced by tech billionaire Dalton Monkhouse (Robert Sheehan), they appear to vaporise everyone in the audience and thousands of identical events all over the world. The students just manage to make it back through the carnage to their rackety old school bus and head home in search of answers, only to be met by a mysteriously empty world.

Realising they are going to have to fight back, the students embark on a road trip to find Dalton Monkhouse and get some answers to what has happened to their families.

Along the way, they are confronted with a succession of increasingly intense challenges - from towering junk monsters to a damaged orb with a seemingly-personal vendetta - and the characters overcome their personal differences and private demons to become an improvised family.

True to Wildseed's core mission to discover and nurture new talent, alongside experienced directors Lawrence Gough and Steve Hughes, the series features burgeoning directors Drew Casson and Nour Wazzi. Drew, now aged 25, first worked with Wildseed when he was just 18 to produce Hungerford, and then its sequel The Darkest Dawn, both picked up by Netflix. THE LAST BUS is the first series for rising young director, Nour Wazzi, one of the first Arabs to direct high-end TV in the UK, following her work with Wildseed on proof-of-concept film, The Moderators. The series is also produced by first-time premium drama producer Andy Mosse and cast by Isabella Odoffin in her first TV job as sole casting director.

The series was filmed at Bottle Yard Studios and at locations across the South West including the Eden Project in Cornwall, Redcliffe Caves and The Downs in Bristol, and Cheddar Gorge and Brean Leisure Park in Somerset.

Wildseed's Creative Director and Co-Founder Jesse Cleverly says: "Although at the top level THE LAST BUS is a shamelessly entertaining sci-fi romp that will entertain the whole family, at another level it is a powerful eco-fable about how the younger generation must be empowered to make very different choices from the generation that preceded it when it comes to the two big challenges of the age - environmental breakdown and hugely sophisticated artificial intelligence."

Wildseed's Managing Director, Miles Bullough added: "When we established Wildseed, our vision was to become the leading destination for promising talent looking to get their break into scripted prime time and THE LAST BUS truly validates what we set out to do. We're hugely excited to be launching a Netflix Original series with such a wealth of new and upcoming talent discovered and developed by our team."

THE LAST BUS series was commissioned by Dominique Bazay, Alexi Wheeler and Will Cartright-Harwood at Netflix in Europe. Wildseed executives Jesse Cleverly and Sarah Mattingley were show runners for the series.

Multi-award winning Wildseed Studios has pioneered a unique approach to nurturing exciting new talent by identifying promising creatives, working intensively with them in development, piloting their ideas and pitching the resulting work into premium platforms including Netflix, Disney+, Sky Kids, BBC3, CBBC and many more.