A local GP is starring in a new hit TV show which sees fugitive contestants go on the run from a team of surveillance experts.

Channel 4s Hunted pits ordinary people against trained snoops as they aim to stay ‘off grid’ for five weeks.

Programme makers have relied on police, military and secret intelligence expertise to adopt methods used by the state when tracking down the 15 fugitives.

Dr Ricky Allen, from Ash near Canterbury, ditched his credit card and mobile phone and told family members he would not be in contact for the duration of the show.

He said: “I have three kids and my family are everything to me.

“The surveillance state will be a threat to the way they live, their quality of life in the years to come – so I’m doing this because the power of the state frightens me and I want to prove that I can beat them.

“Whatever the outcome is they’ll say, ‘yeah you gave them a run for their money dad’ - that would be good.”

Dr Allen is a locum GP practising at the Dover Medical Centre.

He hopes to put his medical skills and camping experience to the test and outwit the show’s hunters.

The programme aired on Thursday, September 17. In next week's episode Dr Allen heads south on the run.

The show's makers claim months of detailed research went into creating the series.

Known monitoring methods used by the state – such as data mining and open source intelligence – were painstakingly examined.

Key sources of information such as phone cell tower locations and car number plate recognition cameras proliferation were also established.

Researchers put in more than 800 Freedom of Information requests to establish the location of state-owned CCTV cameras positioned throughout the UK mainland.

According to Channel 4, “when real footage couldn’t be obtained, our cameras captured footage which would have been available to the state and was stored on a central database until requested by the hunters”.

Dr Allen says he is under no illusion that we are approaching totalitarianism in the UK, stating that George Orwell’s book, 1984, was “supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual”.