What would you do if the world as you knew it ended? If you had to survive in an abandoned town with no food, no running water, no power, no phones and “no rules”?

These are the questions posed by Australian host Jonathan LaPaglia in Apocalypse, which may be the most whacky and terrifying reality-TV concept to grace our screens since someone thought it was a genius idea for strangers to get married at first sight.

The new eight-part series centres on five Australian and nine UK contestants whose sole mission is to survive for 28 days in an inhospitable world full of derelict ransacked buildings, shadowy corridors, eerily empty streets and burnt-out cars.

“This is creepy as f—!” declares 32-year-old Steven, a British content creator who admits he is no Bear Grylls but still reckons he can be a beacon of light for his fellow survivalists.

Things gets even creepier when individuals in the two groups abandoned at either ends of the fictional town of Riverside start wandering around with baseball bats and threatening violent retribution over stolen chickens.

The only missing ingredient is zombies – although they would be at home lurking under beds in the sinister yellow-walled hospital.

Co-commissioned by Binge and the UK’s Channel 4, Apocalypse is produced by the creatives behind shows such as Squid Game: The Challenge and Alone Australia.

While Alone contestants must rely solely on their individual wits and wisdom to survive in the wilderness, this series forces participants to work together – with no prize pool in sight – in an urban dystopia.

They are a disparate bunch, ranging from a London cab driver and a Reform UK politician, to a Paralympian, a chef, a paramedic, a couple of mechanics, and a psychologist and self-described princess with an aversion to bugs, dirty cushions and sweat who may have accidentally ended up on the wrong show.

Scott, a 41-year-old Aussie cattle farmer, rubs his fellow contestants up the wrong way from the get-go with his brash, alpha- male attitude and insistence on food rationing.

“Shit won’t get done unless we go do it,” Scott declares, before leading a mission to break into a boarded-up grocery store.

“I’ve got 48 hours before I start ripping people’s heads off.”

 

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“He’s the most butch thing in the world,” one of Scott’s teammates says in a tone both admiring and mocking.

“He’s like a little tub of whey protein. I don’t know how much testosterone you can get into one man.”

All of which begs the question: Even if this lot can endure the apocalypse and the indignity of going to the loo in a bucket, will they survive each other?

LaPaglia, who was axed last year as longtime host of Australian Survivor, says both series show how social connections can be just as important to survival as physical strength.

“Because these shows strip people back; they strip away all the modern conveniences, all your distractions, and they strip people back to their core values,” he told Australian Women’s Weekly this week.

He thinks viewers are interested in social experiments that reveal people’s characters – “especially a show like Apocalypse where you’re left with nothing, and your sole mission is to survive”.

“You really get to see what a person is made of in that situation. What really matters to them?”

The fictional town of Riverside is suitably post-apocalyptic. Photo: Binge

The abandoned town where the series was filmed is located in the US state of Indiana and was once home to a sprawling mental health facility that included a school, hospital, supermarket. Now known as the Muscatatuck Urban Training Centre, it is used to train police and military personnel in urban warfare.

“The jaw-dropping location allowed the participants to fully immerse in the ‘end of the world’,” said Beth Hart, ITV Studios Australia’s chief content officer.

“They quickly had to work out if they could cope when everything we take for granted disappears.

“It also taps into the armchair survivalist in all of us – you can’t watch without asking yourself, ‘What would I do? Would I actually survive?’.”

Apocalypse began screening on Channel 4 in the UK several days ahead of its premiere in Australia, with the early reviews divided.

A Guardian critic described the concept at a “slam dunk”, even if the picture ultimately painted of humanity was depressing, while the UK Telegraph dubbed it “survival of the thickest”.

With food fights erupting quickly in the early episodes, The Independent’s reviewer predicted the rest of the series would be both intriguing and frustrating to watch.

“And perhaps the takeaway isn’t actually that we’re all doomed,” they said. “Perhaps it’s that, if we were pitted against this group of clueless content creators and Reform councillors, many of us might actually stand a chance of getting a decent bite to eat…”

Apocalypse starts streaming on Binge and Foxtel on Demand on September 16.