• Forest City in Malaysia served as the setting for the Netflix reality show “The Mole”.

• Forest City, which was planned as a $100 billion mega-complex, has become a ghost town with few residents.

• The developer is struggling with financial problems and less than 15% of the project was completed last year.

Malaysia’s $100 billion ghost town was supposed to house 700,000 people. After few people moved in, developers tried in vain to turn it into a tourist center.

Now the mega construction project serves as the backdrop for a handful of reality shows and documentaries.

The empty town just beyond Singapore’s western border was used for an episode of the second season of the Netflix reality show “The Mole,” which premiered last week.

The competition-style reality series follows 12 contestants as they complete challenges while one of them secretly sabotages the other players. They compete to grow a pot of money as a prize and find out who the traitor among them is.

The 10-episode second season of the series was shot entirely in Malaysia and is set in Forest City, Kuala Lumpur and Tioman Island. Filming began in July last year and lasted for six weeks, local media reported.

Participants from diverse professional backgrounds complete treasure hunts, go free diving and abseil from a 38-story building in Forest City.

In the third episode of the season, the show’s host, former NPR journalist Ari Shapiro, introduces Forest City: “A perfect place for a glamorous vacation home, for those who can afford it. And most of the year they’re empty.”

The city has also been featured in other recent shows.

South Korean TV station KBS filmed an episode of the travel reality series “Battle Trip” there, while German TV station ProSieben made a short documentary about Forest City. An Austrian documentary called “Hungry: Tipping the Scales” was also filmed there.

Announced in 2006, the luxury residential project was to include apartments, a water park and hotels. The entire project cost its developers $100 billion.

But eight years after construction began, only a few thousand people live there. The project has become a Ghost town – and a major burden for the property developer Country Garden, which is facing significant financial problems elsewhere.

As of last year, only about 15% of planned properties had been completed and most of the completed apartments appear to have never been occupied.

Netflix and Forest City did not respond to requests for comment.

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