Oddball comedy The Last Man on Earth is a breakout hit

Will Forte takes on the apocalypse in a smashing style.

Will Forte is the creator and star of The Last Man on Earth. Fox via Getty Images

Imagine the giddy, goofball freedom of being the last living person on Earth, unencumbered by laws, morals or social restraint.

Now imagine former Saturday Night Live funnyman Will Forte set loose in a post-apocalyptic America, free to amuse himself however he sees fit, and you can see why The Last Man on Earth, which premieres tonight on OSN, is up for four Emmys, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

“Automatically, in the first episode you want your character to be likeable, you want people to find him to be sympathetic,” says Forte, the show’s creator and star, who plays former family man and bank employee Phil Tandy Miller.

“We thought it would be interesting to move away from there and create this character who isn’t the perfect person. In this show, I feel like if you continue to watch, your allegiances will kind of constantly be shifting.”

This series anchors its madness with what Edgar Allan Poe referred to as “the imp of the perverse” – a metaphor for those moments when we give in to that mischievous demon inside who tells us to do the wrong thing, simply because we can get away with it.

Backed by wildly creative writing from his partners Chris Miller and Phil Lord (The Lego Movie; 22 Jump Street), Forte's character force-feeds his "imp" with a gleefully destructive spree: hurling bowling balls into a pyramid of fish tanks; wearing Hugh Hefner's red silk pyjamas; grabbing a Van Gogh painting and the Oval Office's rug; and cutting a hole in a high diving board to create his personal "toilet pool".

“It has been really fun to break a lot of stuff,” says Forte.

Underneath Phil’s rush towards whim fulfilment, however, runs a deeper current. As he scours the US, Canada and Mexico in his RV, making the best of his circumstances, he longs to find another survivor – and above all hoping beyond hope for a woman to love.

Of course, you should be careful what you wish for. He finally runs into Kristen Schaal (a familiar US comedy face from her roles on 30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords and Wilfred, and a semi-regular contributor to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), who arrives just in time to prevent him from killing himself in despair. But far from being his dream woman, she turns out to be a smothering, uptight gal from Delaware who can't let go of civilisation – she insists, for example, that he still obey stop signs, and pressures him to marry her so they can repopulate the Earth with "legitimate" children.

Over the 13-episode first season, other survivors pop up: January Jones (Mad Men), as a real-estate agent for whom Phil harbours a mad crush, despite her mistrust of him; Mary Steenburgen (Back to the Future Part III; The Help), as a chef and former restaurateur; Mel Rodriguez (Getting On), as a kind, selfless man; and Cleopatra Coleman (Dancing with the Stars), as an Aussie medical student and "political nerd".

The 45-year-old Forte, who appeared on SNL from 2002 to 2010, has had his ups and downs since leaving that show, from the ridicule heaped upon him for MacGruber, his shot-in-28-days vulgar parody of the MacGyver TV series, to praise for his dramatic performance in Nebraska (2013), a black-and-white road movie in which he co-starred with legendary actor Bruce Dern (Coming Home), who went on to win Best Actor at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for his role.

Don’t expect piles of decomposing bodies or car-clogged freeways – the cities here are clean as a whistle and streets are deserted, with not an ounce of rotting flesh to be seen.

"It is embarrassing the little amount of research" that went into Last Man, says Forte. "I watched that [documentary] show Life After People and tried to remember what I had learnt, and always thought that maybe I would do some research to make sure all the information was accurate – but I skipped that step."

Slackers take note – Fox has already ordered a second season of this oddball breakout hit.

• The Last Man on Earth is at 9pm tonight on OSN First Comedy HD