It's Blade Runner meets boy bands.

2030CE, a new youth-oriented sci-fi series that debuts Wednesday on YTV, unfolds in a future 30 years from now where teenagers rule the world.

If that conjures up images of bubblegum pop music, flying cars up to Inspiration Point and aliens taking English as a second language in high school, think again.

Thanks to an "apocalyptic" environmental collapse, teens are charged with rebuilding society in a world best described -- as most science fiction is -- as "Orwellian."

And thanks to a new-fangled incurable disease, no one lives past the age of 30.

"It's definitely got a 1984-type feel," says Corey Sevier, the series' 17-year-old star.

Sevier plays Hart, a 15-year-old graduate of medical school who wants to find a cure for the Progressive Aging Syndrome that's knocking off the world's adults.

Instead, Nexes, the all-powerful Big Brother of this world, assigns Hart to serve in the lesser eco-technical class which is in charge of the toxic clean-up after the environmental and economic collapse. Eventually Hart stumbles across a band of underground rebels determined to expose Nexes' corruption.

"I'm very excited, just totally thrilled," says Sevier. "It's a very physical character so there's a lot of demanding stunts. It's action-packed but also has good family values."

That included, for Sevier, climbing the TD Tower, Winnipeg's tallest skyscraper, an effect achieved with digital wizardy. "There's a fair bit of CGI effects. I've seen the final cut of the pilot and was really impressed."

Acting opposite effects, he says, "is definitely a challenge ... But I compare working with a green screen to working with animals because you don't get any feedback from animals either."

The creators of 2030CE -- including Mind's Eye Pictures of Regina and Edmonton and Winnipeg's Buffalo Gal Pictures -- have committed to proceeding with 13 episodes without any international partners or foreign sales yet. The filmed-in-Winnipeg show has already been renewed for 13 more episodes by YTV.

Sevier, for one, believes young viewers will latch onto the show -- and its teens-rule-the-world premise. "It's edgier than your average kids show. There's a lot of depth."