The Virus
Format: Series (8 x 30 mins)
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Dramedy / Satire / Social Commentary
Setting: Mullumbimby and surrounds, after a global tech collapse
Tone: Wry, heartfelt, absurd, sharply observational
Logline: When the internet breaks, Mullumbimby wellness influencer Anna-Lisa Jones and her new-age community must learn to survive without likes, livestreams or online shopping. A story about rebuilding connection in a disconnected world.
Synopsis
Anna-Lisa Rose Depp Butterfly Excelsior Jones — once a wellness influencer with a million followers and a kombucha brand — now can’t even send a text. When the internet collapses overnight, society fractures, commerce crashes, and influencer culture dies in a single, quiet gasp.
In the hills outside Mullumbimby, Anna-Lisa is stranded with her new wife Florence, her conspiracy-theorist father Jahai’a, and the ghost of a life she curated online. As she navigates this unplugged apocalypse — where kombucha means nothing and no one cares about her curated morning routines — Anna-Lisa must confront who she is without Wi-Fi.
Around her, a cast of off-grid misfits try to rebuild community: Isabella and Declan Swiftman, former online lifestyle gurus now grappling with dirt and depression; Jeff, Anna-Lisa’s ex-husband, who shows up hoping to win her back with battery-powered retail dreams; and Indigo, her child, whose patience is running out.
But even off-grid life isn’t safe. As tech remnants are scavenged and cultish ideologies rise, Anna-Lisa is pulled into a surreal power struggle between the post-digital utopians and the desperate remnants of consumer culture. She’ll need more than crystals and manifestation rituals to survive this one.
The Virus is a darkly funny, emotionally layered, post-apocalyptic satire about finding identity, love, and real human connection in a world gone offline.
Concept
The Virus is a half-hour dramedy series (8 x 30 mins) that blends satire, offbeat character comedy, and heartfelt drama. Set in a post-internet Mullumbimby, the series explores what happens when a generation raised on performance loses its platform — and has to live for real.
Visually and tonally, the show echoes the satirical warmth of The White Lotus, the rural absurdity of Welcome to Wrexham, and the existential comedy of Please Like Me. The aesthetic combines lush Northern Rivers landscapes with decaying tech, mismatched furniture, solar panels, crystals, and goats. Lots of goats.
Each episode follows Anna-Lisa and her tangled web of chosen family, exes, and fellow collapse survivors as they try — and often fail — to build a functioning community. Episodes interweave past flashbacks (to influencer life) with the current struggle to adapt. At its heart, The Virus is a story about healing: from narcissism, from loneliness, and from the myth of personal brands.
The series tackles themes of identity, queerness, co-parenting, masculinity, and class — but always with levity, absurdity, and bite. As society fractures and cults emerge from the algorithm’s shadow, The Virus asks: who are we without the internet — and do we even want to go back?
Development Stage
Series outline and treatment
