All aboard The Last Bus of humanity! If you’re fleeing a full-on apocalypse, a rickety old school bus is hardly the ideal getaway vehicle, but The Last Bus on Netflix sees a group of students with no choice.
This new comedy-action sci-fi series, starring After Life’s Tom Basden and The Umbrella Academy's Robert Sheehan, follows a ragtag bunch of school children attending the launch of 'genie orbs'; robots designed to clean up the environment.
But at the launch, the orbs wipe out the entire audience except for the students, who just about manage to scramble back onto their school bus. And just as they’re trying to come to terms with what happened they learn that all other humans have been vaporized too. Luckily the kids are super smart and have exactly what it takes to fight back.
Here's all you need to know about The Last Bus on Netflix...
The Last Bus release date
The 10-episode sci-fi series The Last Bus will premiere worldwide on Netflix on April 1 and it promises to be a thrilling ride.
Is there a trailer for The Last Bus?
Yes there's a trailer for The Last Bus where you can get a first look at our unlikely heroes. The trailer shows huge junk monsters and terrifying robots, so the students will definitely face their challenges. Take a look below...
The Last Bus plot
The Last Bus joins a group of school kids on a field trip to the launch of 'genie orbs', a new type of robot created by tech billionaire Dalton Monkhouse (Robert Sheehan) to clean up the environment.
But as soon as they are introduced to the world the robots appear to vaporize everyone in the audience. And it seems there have been similar incidents all across the world. The students manage to escape the carnage and make it back to their school bus but they return home to a mysteriously empty world. With no other choice, the determined group sets off on a road trip to find Dalton Monkhouse and demand answers but it’s not going to be an easy ride and they must tackle everything from huge junk monsters to an orb with a vendetta. Can the students save the world from a robot apocalypse?
The Last Bus cast — Robert Sheehan on playing Dalton Monkhouse
Robert Sheehan is playing tech billionaire Dalton Monkhouse who may provide the students with the answers they are searching for when it comes to the psychotic robots.
"It’s always fun to explore imagined futures and redesign the world and say this is the ship we might have in 20 or 40 years. For me, it’s a very novel enjoyment, getting in and out of futuristics pods. The environment is already in the minds of young people who have a deep understanding of what needs to change. Because of the huge flow of information, there’s this profound movement that’s affected people in their teens which is very formative. The show will hopefully contribute uniquely, through the prism of humour, to this movement."
Robert loved filming The Last Bus in Bristol. "It’s such a gorgeous place. Stunning and it reminded me of Ireland – Galway – in many ways. The depth of green and verdant thickness of the place, it’s really beautiful. I went down there and thought ‘I could really be here, spend time here in Bristol, really happily’."
Robert played Nathan in the Channel 4 sci-fi show Misfits and Vladek in the Sky series Fortitude. He’s also appeared in The Umbrella Academy on Netflix, Genius and Love/Hate.
The Last Bus cast — Tom Basden on playing Mr Short
Tom Basden plays the teacher Mr Short in The Last Bus. "He’s so earnest and such a keen teacher," he says. "It was great to be able to play someone who’s not afraid to be uncool and a bit of a tech nerd but also out of his depth – he can’t control the kids and he’s a little bit bullied by them.
"The young cast is one of the show’s real strengths I think. Having young characters being played by actors the right age is quite unusual; production companies often cast older kids to make it easier. They were amazingly similar to their characters, so they were totally natural and there was great interplay between them. Many of them hadn’t done anything like this before, so they all had this wild-eyed enthusiasm and joy on set which was really infectious."
Tom has already won our hearts playing Matt, Tony’s big-hearted brother-in-law Matt in Ricky Gervais Netflix comedy After Life. Tom has also starred in Plebs, W1A, The Wrong Mans and Quacks. He also plays the benefits advisor in the BBC2 show Mandy, starring his After Life co-star and Motherland actress Diane Morgan.
Who else is starring in The Last Bus
The ensemble cast of The Last Bus includes His Dark Material’s Daniel Frogson, Blue Story’s Curtis Kantsa, Lauryn Ajufo (Boiling Point) and Lara McDonnell (Belfast). Carys John (School of Rock), Nathanael Saleh (Game of Thrones) and Moosa Mostafa (Tim Burton’s Wednesday) also star. The series also features complete newcomers Marlie Morrelle and Phoebe De Silva who were chosen from a nationwide search for their first acting roles.
What are Genie Orbs in The Last Bus?
The Genie Orbs are the crowning achievement of Dalton Monkhouse crowning achievement. They are millions of artificial intelligence powered autonomous drones with the ability to reconstitute matter at a molecular level and powerful enough to repair the entire ecosystem. In order to perform this extraordinary feat, Monkhouse built the orbs to learn and evolve. But he did not consider what might happen if his creations encounter a bus full of determined kids and start to learn and grow as a result of these interactions. This is what happens and the kids come to understand that how they treat this technology will define whether the Orbs become their enemies or friends – but can they ever fully trust the machines that vaporised all of humanity?
