First, you would have seen a flier, an advertisement for a human force-field experiment or a camera that took pictures of the past. Had you called the number printed at the flier’s bottom, you would have been directed to the 16th floor of a high-rise in San Francisco’s financial district and told to an unlock an office door.

So began your “induction process” to the Games of Nonchalance, an art project-cum-social experiment that ran in San Francisco and Oakland from 2008 to 2011 and sent an estimated 7,000 people on a series of avant-garde scavenger hunts. Some participants didn’t know if they had stumbled onto a game or some grand conspiracy. Others feared being lured into a self-help cult.

Now, in a wily example of art imitating art imitating life, that immersive experience has been reimagined as “Dispatches From Elsewhere,” a 10-episode scripted series created by Jason Segel, beginning Sunday on AMC.

“This one just felt particularly magical in the way that it all came together,” Segel said, speaking by telephone from a park bench in Burbank, Calif.