Apr 06, 1985  The Max Headroom show had indy and punk classics from Siouxsie and the banshees to King kurt. This was simply a classic, to be distinguished from the TV series which was simply OK. Although at time's Max's stutter could prove irritating in the extreme. His jokes may have left a permanent scar on my psyche and perhaps shaped my poor sense of. Matt Frewer, Actor: Watchmen. Matt Frewer has been travelling all over North America in recent months filming recurring roles. In Vancouver as Carnage in Netflix's sci-fi drama Altered Carbon (2018); in Montreal (opposite Dennis Quaid) as Anthony Bruhl in NBC's Timeless (2016); in Toronto as Paul Rice in Crackle's The Art of More (2015), and also in Toronto as Dr.

Max Headroom is a fictional artificial intelligence (AI) character, known for his wit and stuttering, electronically altered voice. He was introduced in early 1985. The character was created by George Stone,^[1]Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton. Max was portrayed by Matt Frewer and was called 'the first computer-generated TV personality',^[2] although the computer-generated appearance was achieved with an actor in prosthetic make-up and harsh lighting, in front of a blue screen.^[3]

Development[edit]

Concept[edit]

For his role of hosting a music video program, Max Headroom was conceived of by creator Rocky Morton as 'the most boring thing that I could think of to do..a talking head: a middle-class white male in a suit, talking to them in a really boring way about music videos',^[3] also deciding that he should be computer-generated.

Matt Frewer was chosen based on his 'unbelievably well-defined features' that Jankel noticed in a casting polaroid, and from his comedic improvisation skills that he demonstrated in a ten-minute audition.^[3] The actor took inspiration from The Mary Tyler Moore Show'sTed Baxter, saying in a 1987 interview, 'I particularly wanted to get that phony bonhomie of Baxter .. Max always assumes a decade long friendship on the first meeting. At first sight he'll ask about that blackhead on your nose.'^[4] Producer Peter Wagg had already hired writers David Hansen and Paul Owen to construct Max Headroom's 'whole persona'^[5], which Morton described as the 'very sterile, arrogant, Western personification of the middle-class, male TV host'.^[6] They created dialogue for Max's appearances in the TV movie and TV shows, which the actor added to through improvisation.^[5] The two also wrote the 1985 book in his voice, Max Headroom's Guide to Life.^[7]

The background story provided for the Max Headroom character in his original appearance was rooted in a dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations, devised by George Stone and eventual script writer Steve Roberts. The AI of Max Headroom was shown to have been created from the memories of crusading journalist Edison Carter. The character's name came from the last thing Carter saw during a vehicular accident that put him into a coma: a traffic warning sign marked 'MAX. HEADROOM: 2.3 M' (an overhead clearance of 2.3 metres) suspended across a car park entrance.^[3] The name originated well before the other aspects of the character from George Stone, who said 'Max headroom was over the entranceway of every carpark in the UK. Instant branding, instant recognition.'^[5]

Production[edit]

The classic look for the character is a shiny dark suit often paired with Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. Other than the publicity for the character, the real image of Max was not computer-generated. Computing technology in the mid-1980s was not sufficiently advanced yet for a full-motion, voice-synchronized human head to be practical for a television series.^[8] Max's image was actually that of actor Matt Frewer in latex and foam prosthetic make-up with a fiberglass suit created by Peter Litten and John Humphreys.^[8] Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as 'gruelling' and 'not fun', likening it to 'being on the inside of a giant tennis ball.'^[9] Only his head and shoulders were depicted, usually superimposed over a moving geometric background. This background was a piece of CGI footage that had been generated for one of Morton and Jankel's ad agency's commercials,^[3] later, in the United States version, generated by a Commodore Amiga computer.^[10] His chaotic speech patterns are based upon his voice pitching up or down seemingly at random, or occasionally becoming stuck in a stuttering loop. These modulations also appear in live performances.

The rights to the Max Headroom character were held by All3Media as of November 2007.^[11]

TV history[edit]

TV movie[edit]

Max Headroom originally appeared in the British-made cyberpunkTV movieMax Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, which was broadcast on April 4, 1985.^[3]

The Max Headroom Show series[edit]

The TV movie consisted of material originally planned to be broken into five-minute backstory segments^[3] for the British music video program, The Max Headroom Show, which premiered two days later. Max Headroom served as veejay, and its first episodes unusually featured no introductory title sequence or end credits. The show was an immediate hit in the UK, doubling Channel 4's viewing figures for its time slot within a month.^[4]

A second season, which broadened the original concept to include celebrity interviews and a studio audience, was produced in late 1985, and a third and final season ran in 1986. The second and third seasons were shown first on the US cable channel Cinemax, and on Channel Four an average of six months later.

A Christmas special was produced at the end of the second season and seen by UK audiences just before the regular run of the season, and just after the US season concluded.

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Cinemax produced a fourth season of the talk show on its own, The Original Talking Max Headroom Show, which ran for six episodes in 1987. These episodes were never shown in the UK.

The series pilot won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for graphics in 1986.^[12]

Max Headroom series[edit]

The final spin-off from the original film was the dramatic television series, Max Headroom, which was broadcast in the United States, running for two short seasons (mid-1987 and late 1987), with two more episodes shown later in 1988.

Shout! Factory released Max Headroom: The Complete Series on DVD in the United States and Canada on August 10, 2010.^[13]

Television hijack[edit]

A broadcast signal hijacking of two television stations in Chicago, Illinois was carried out on November 22, 1987, in an act of video piracy.^[14][15][16] The stations' broadcasts were interrupted by a video of an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume, accompanied by distorted audio.

The first incident took place for 25 seconds during the sports segment of WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. news broadcast; the second occurred around two hours later, for about 90 seconds during PBS affiliate WTTW's broadcast of Doctor Who.

The hacker made references to Max Headroom's endorsement of Coca-Cola, the TV series Clutch Cargo, WGN anchor Chuck Swirsky; and 'all the greatest world newspaper nerds', a reference to WGN's call letters, which stand for 'World's Greatest Newspaper'. A corrugated panel swiveled back and forth mimicking Max Headroom's geometric background effect.^[17] The video ended with a pair of exposed buttocks being spanked with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed. The culprits were never caught or identified.^[18]

In other media[edit]

Max became a celebrity in every medium outside his own television series, making cameo and sampled appearances in other TV series, books^[19], music,^[20], and advertisement campaigns.^[11] He was the spokesman for New Coke (after the return of Coca-Cola Classic), delivering the slogan 'Catch the wave!' (in his staccato, stuttering playback as 'C-c-catch the wave!')^[4]. After the two TV series and the advertising campaign had ended, Peter Wagg attempted to sell a movie concept called Max Headroom for President.^[3] In 1986, Quicksilva released a Max Headroom video game, created by developers Binary Design, originally for the SinclairZX Spectrum and ported to the Commodore 64, Amstrad, and Amiga.^[21] His last TV appearance to date was a series of advertisements for Channel 4 in 2007 to raise awareness for the digital switchover, and were directed by Rocky Morton.^[11]

In popular culture[edit]

Max Headroom has inspired many imitations and spoofs:

• In the 1980s, Garry Trudeau created the character Ron Headrest for his political comic strip Doonesbury. The character combined the concepts of Max Headroom and then US President Ronald Reagan.^[22]
• Back to the Future Part II also featured a Max Headroom inspired Reagan, and computer-generated versions of Michael Jackson and the Ayatollah Khomeini as waiters at the fictitious Cafe '80s. ^[23]
• In Family Matters Season 2 Episode 10 'Science Project' Steve Urkel builds an Atomic Bomb that has a Max Headroom like computer interface that looks like him. It gives the countdown before detonation, but fortunatly it was all in Laura's Dream.
• In the Ernest Cline novel Ready Player One, protagonist Wade Watts uses the name Bryce Lynch as his alias. He also has a Max Headroom AI in his ship.
• Eminem's 2013 'Rap God' video features himself portrayed as Max Headroom.^[24]
• In 2015, Max Headroom appeared in the film Pixels in a cameo as the ominous alien liaison just before the final showdown between the Arcaders and the leader of the invading aliens, who have been posing as 1980s video game characters and celebrities.^[25] Matt Frewer reprised his role, but unlike Max Headroom's other appearances, in the film Max was generated via CGI from a facial capture of the performance, which led to the visual effects team needing to manually reduce the accuracy to mimick the immobility of the facial prosthetics.^[26]

References[edit]

1. ^'YouTube video at the ICA with Stone, Morton and Jankel'. Archived from the original on 2016-03-22. Retrieved 2014-10-03.
2. ^Wogan, Terry (host) (14 August 1985). 'Max Headroom'. Wogan. BBC1.
3. ^ ^abcdefghBishop, Bryan (2015-04-02). 'Live and Direct: The definitive oral history of 1980s digital icon Max Headroom'. The Verge. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
4. ^ ^abc'Mad About M-M-Max'. Newsweek. April 20, 1987.
5. ^ ^abcBrian Ward (2010). Live On Network 23: The Story Of Max Headroom (Max Headroom: The Complete Series bonus feature) (DVD). Shout Factory.
6. ^'TV's Hall of Flukey Fame'. People. 1986-08-25. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
7. ^Bishop, Bryan (2015-04-02). 'Photo essay: the wildest Max Headroom merchandise of the 1980s'. The Verge. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
8. ^ ^abBishop, Bryan (2015-04-02). 'Photo essay: how make-up and visual effects brought Max Headroom to life'. The Verge. Retrieved 2020-03-29.
9. ^'Max Headroom's Matt Frewer Interview', G4tv.com, retrieved March 3, 2010
10. ^Foust, John (October 1987). 'Max Headroom and the Amiga'. Amazing Computer Magazine. Vol. 2 no. 10.
11. ^ ^abcMark Sweney (November 29, 2007). 'Channel 4 resurrects Max Headroom to promote digital channels Media'. theguardian.com. Retrieved November 29, 2013.
12. ^'Explore the Awards BAFTA Awards'. Bafta.org. Retrieved November 29, 2013.
13. ^'Max Headroom: The Complete Series'. Shout! Factory. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
14. ^Ross, Andrew (1990). 'Techno-Ethics and Tele-Ethics: Three Lives in the Day of Max Headroom'. In Mellencamp, Patricia (ed.). Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Indiana University Press. p. 138. ISBN0-253-33617-1.
15. ^Schwoch, James; White, Mimi; Reilly, Susan (1992). Media Knowledge: Readings in Popular Culture, Pedagogy, and Critical Citizenship. SUNY Press. p. 113. ISBN978-0-7914-0825-4.
16. ^Forester, Tom; Morrison, Perry (1994). Computer Ethics: Cautionary Tales and Ethical Dilemmas in Computing. MIT Press. p. 74. ISBN0-262-56073-9. [S]several other instances of uplink video piracy have occurred [..] WTTW (Channel 11 in Chicago) was also overridden by a 90 second transmission, this time by a man in a Max Headroom mask smacking his exposed buttocks with a fly swatter.
17. ^Knittel, Chris (November 25, 2013). 'The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack'. Motherboard. Vice.
18. ^Gallagher, Sean (November 22, 2017). 'Thirty years later, 'Max Headroom' TV pirate remains at large'. Ars Technica.
19. ^Loder, Kurt (September 14, 1986). 'MAX MAD MAX HEADROOM, WHO'S GETTING HIS COMPUTER-GENERATED SMARMY MUG ON EVERYTHING FROM TV SHOWS TO T-SHIRTS, HAS THE VIDEO GENERATION GOING..'South Florida Sun Sentinel. Retrieved March 29, 2020. For one, there was a book market for what had become Max mania: Steve Roberts whammed out a picture-book novelization of his film script, and Owen and Hansen came up with Max Headroom's Guide to Life (the most suitably pompous title they could concoct), and both sold well.
20. ^'Paranoimia (Remix)'. Billboard. Retrieved March 29, 2020.
21. ^Mclaughlin, Robert (March 19, 2008). 'Max Out: The Max Headroom computer game remembered'. Den of Geek. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
22. ^Trudeau, G. B. (October 1995). Flashbacks: Twenty-Five Years of Doonesbury. Andrews and McMeel. p. 217. ISBN0-8362-0436-0.
23. ^Boyar, Jay (November 22, 1989). ''BACK TO FUTURE II' ANOTHER GOOD TIME WITH TIME'. Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved March 29, 2020.
24. ^'See Eminem as Max Headroom in Lewinsky-Referencing 'Rap God' Video'. Spin. 2013-11-27. Retrieved 2017-04-08.
25. ^Suellentrop, Chris (July 24, 2015). 'All These Things Actually Happen In Adam Sandler's Pixels'. Kotaku. Retrieved March 28, 2020.
26. ^Wilson, Tim. 'Pixels: Going From 8-bits to Epic is No Game'. Creative COW. Retrieved March 28, 2020.

External links[edit]

• Bishop, Bryan (2015). Live and direct: The definitive oral history of 1980s digital icon Max Headroom, The Verge

Max Headroom is an American satirical science fiction television series by Chrysalis Visual Programming and Lakeside Productions for Lorimar-Telepictures that aired in the United States on ABC from March 31, 1987 to May 12, 1988. The series is set in a futuristic dystopia ruled by an oligarchy of television networks, and features the character and media personality Max Headroom. The story is based on the Channel 4 British TV film produced by Chrysalis, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future.

Plot[edit]

In the future, an oligarchy of television networks rules the world. Even the government functions primarily as a puppet of the network executives, serving mainly to pass laws — such as banning 'off' switches on televisions — that protect and consolidate the networks' power. Television technology has advanced to the point that viewers' physical movements and thoughts can be monitored through their television sets. Almost all non-television technology has been discontinued or destroyed. The only real check on the power of the networks is Edison Carter, a crusading investigative journalist who regularly exposes the unethical practices of his own employer, and the team of allies both inside and outside the system who assist him in getting his reports to air and protecting him from the forces that wish to silence or kill him.

Characters[edit]

Edison Carter[edit]

Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) is a hard-hitting reporter for Network 23, who sometimes uncovered things that his superiors in the network would have preferred be kept private. Eventually, one of these instances required him to flee his workspace, upon which he was injured in a motorcycle accident in a parking lot.

The series depicted very little of the past described by Edison. He met a female televangelist (whom he had dated in college) when his reporting put him at odds with the Vu Age Church that she now headed. Edison was sent on a near-rampage to avenge a former colleague, who died as a result of a story on dream-harvesting.

Edison cares about his co-workers, especially Theora Jones and Bryce Lynch, and he has a deep respect for his producer, Murray (although he rarely shows it).

Max Headroom[edit]

Max Headroom (Frewer) is a computer reconstruction of Carter, created after Bryce Lynch uploaded a copy of his mind. He appears as a computer-rendered bust of Carter superimposed on a wire-frame background. Since Carter's last sight before the motorcycle crash was the sign 'Max. headroom' on a parking garage gate, these were the reconstruction's first words and ultimately his name. While Carter is a dedicated professional, Max is a wisecracking observer of human contradictions.

Despite being the titular character, Max sparsely appeared on the show. While he occasionally played a significant part in a plot — sometimes by traveling through networks to gain information or by revealing secrets about Carter that Carter himself wouldn't divulge — his most frequent role was as comic relief, delivering brief quips in reaction to certain events or giving a humorous soliloquy at the end of an episode.

Theora Jones[edit]

Theora Jones first appeared in the British-made television pilot film for the series. She was Network 23's star controller ('stolen' from the World One Network by Murray) and, working with Edison, the network's star reporter, she often helped save the day for everyone. She was also a potential love interest for Edison, but that subplot was not explored fully on the show before it was cancelled.

Network 23's personnel files list her father as unknown, her mother as deceased, and her brother as Shawn Jones; Shawn is the focus on the second episode broadcast, 'Rakers'. Mabinogi duel wiki.

Theora Jones was played by Amanda Pays, who along with Matt Frewer and W. Morgan Sheppard, was one of only three cast members to also appear in the American-made series that followed.

Bryce Lynch[edit]

Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), a child prodigy and computer hacker, is Network 23's one-man technology research department.

In the stereotypical hacker ethos, Bryce has few principles and fewer loyalties. He seems to accept any task, even morally questionable ones, as long as he is allowed to have the freedom to play with technology however he sees fit. This, in turn, makes him a greater asset to the technological needs and demands of the network, and the whims of its executives and stars. However, he also generally does not hurt or infringe on others, making him a rare neutral character in the Max Headroom universe.

In the pilot episode of the series, Bryce is enlisted by evil network CEO Ned Grossberg (Charles Rocket) to investigate the mental patterns of unconscious reporter Edison Carter, to determine whether or not Carter has discovered the secrets of the 'Blipverts' scandal. Bryce uploads the contents of Carter's memory into the Network 23 computer system, creating Max Headroom. It had been Bryce, following orders from Grossberg, who fought a hacking battle of sorts with Theora Jones that led to Edison hitting his head on a traffic barrier and falling unconscious.

After the first episode, Bryce is generally recruited by Carter and his controller, Theora Jones, to provide technical aid to their investigative reporting efforts.

Blank Reg[edit]

Reg (W. Morgan Sheppard) is a 'blank', a person not indexed in the government's database. He broadcasts the underground Big Time Television Network from his bus. He is a good friend of Edison Carter, and saves him on more than one occasion. With colleague/lover Dominique, he operates and is the onscreen voice of Big Time television, 'All day every day, making tomorrow seem like yesterday.'

He dresses in a punk style and has a Mohawk haircut. He has an energetic personality and a strong nostalgic streak, defending antiquated music videos and printed books in equal measure.

Ned Grossberg[edit]

Ned Grossberg is a recurring villain on the series, played by former Saturday Night Live cast member Charles Rocket.

In the pilot episode, Grossberg is the chairman of Network 23, a major city television station with the highest-rated investigative-news show in town, hosted by Edison Carter. In the Max Headroom world, real-time ratings equal advertising dollars, and advertisements have replaced stocks as the measure of corporate worth.

Grossberg, with his secret prodigy Bryce Lynch, develops a high-speed advertising delivery method known as Blipverts, which condenses full advertisements into a few seconds. When Carter discovers that Blipverts are killing people, Grossberg orders Lynch to prevent Carter from getting out of the building. Knocked unconscious, Carter's memories are extracted into a computer by Lynch in order to determine whether Carter uncovered Grossberg's knowledge of the danger of Blipverts. The resulting computer file of the memory-extraction process becomes Max Headroom, making Grossberg directly responsible for the creation of the character. In the end, Grossberg is publicly exposed as responsible for the Blipverts scandal, and is removed as chairman of Network 23.

A few episodes later, in 'Grossberg's Return', Grossberg reappears as a board member of Network 66. Again, he invents a dubious advertising medium and convinces the chairman of the network to adopt it. When the advertising method is shown to be a complete fraud, the resulting public reaction against the network leads to the chairman being removed, and Grossberg manages to assume the chairmanship.

When under stress, Grossberg exhibits a tic of slightly stretching his neck in his suit's collar, first seen in episode 1 when he confronts Lynch in his lab regarding Max retaining Carter's memory about the blipverts.

In the UK telefilm Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future upon which the American series was based, the character was called Grossman and was played by Nickolas Grace. Rocket portrayed Grossberg as an American yuppie with a characteristic facial and neck-stretching twitch.

Other characters[edit]

• Murray McKenzie (Jeffrey Tambor), Carter's high-strung producer, whose job often becomes a balancing act between supporting Carter's stories and pleasing Network 23's executives.
• Ben Cheviot (George Coe), one of the executives on Network 23's board of directors. He becomes the board's new chairman after Ned Grossberg is fired in the wake of the Blipvert incident. He is surprisingly ethical and almost invariably backs Edison Carter, occasionally against the wishes of the Network 23 board of directors.
• Dominique (Concetta Tomei), co-proprietor of Big Time TV along with Blank Reg, managing the business aspects of running the station. It is implied that she and Reg are romantically involved, if not husband and wife. Although Dominique may not be a blank like Reg, as she possesses credit tubes, she behaves culturally as one.
• Breughel (Jere Burns), an intelligent, sociopathic criminal-for-hire who, along with Mahler, makes money disposing of corpses for other criminals by selling them to body banks around the city. However, he is not above selling out his employers if it means a big payoff, a fact which Edison Carter takes advantage of on several occasions while working on stories.
• Mahler (Rick Ducommun), Breughel's accomplice, who serves primarily as the muscle of the duo's body-harvesting operation. In 'Dream Thieves', it is revealed that Breughel killed Mahler and sold off his body during a slow night of business, and replaced him with a new man whom he nicknamed 'Mahler' as a mocking tribute.
• Rik (J.W. Smith), a streetwise pedicab driver whom Edison Carter frequently employs when looking for information about the city's underworld.
• Blank Bruno (Peter Crook), Bryce's mentor, who is a revolutionary Blank who works to make life better for the city's Blank population by any means necessary. He has a pet toad, which he calls 'God'.
• Blank Traker (Brian Brophy, Season 1 / Michael Preston, Season 2), one of Bruno's fellow revolutionaries.
• Martinez (Ricardo Gutierrez), one of Network 23's helicopter pilots, he often works with Carter when he is out on assignment.
• Janie Crane (Lisa Niemi), one of Network 23's second-tier reporters, who ends up breaking a few important stories of her own throughout the series.
• Angie Barry (Rosalind Chao), one of Network 23's second-tier reporters. She often fills-in for Carter when he is indisposed.
• Joel Dung Po (Rob Narita), one of Network 23's second-tier reporters.
• Julia Formby (Virginia Kiser), one of Network 23's board members. In 'Body Banks', it is revealed that she once had an affair with Cheviot, for which she is blackmailed by a wealthy member of the Plantagenet family into stealing Max Headroom from Network 23 in the hope that Max's program might be used to preserve the mind of his mother.
• Gene Ashwell (Hank Garrett), one of Network 23's board members, who frequently panics when the network faces a crisis. It is revealed in 'Deities' that he is a member of the Vu-Age Church, and is responsible for kidnapping Max on behalf of the church's leader.
• Ms. Lauren (Sharon Barr), one of Network 23's board members. Replaced Formby on the board after Formby grew weary of 'handling things at night'.
• Mr. Edwards (Lee Wilkof), one of Network 23's board members. He has a groveling disposition, and regards ratings as more important than life itself. Once cried at the thought of no one watching the network, and compared the potential end of network television to the end of the world.
• Simon Peller (Sherman Howard), a corrupt politician who receives financial backing from Network 23. He shares a mutual animosity with Carter, who despises Peller's underhanded political tactics.
• Mr. Bartlett (Andreas Katsulas), one of the board members of Network 66. An incautious risk-taker, he frequently becomes directly involved in the network's shady projects, going behind even Ned Grossberg's back on occasion.
• Chubb Shaw (James F. Dean), one of the board members of Network 66.
• Dragul (John Durbin), a Network censor who hates Blanks.
• Ped Xing (Arsenio Trinidad, Season 1 / Sab Shimono, Season 2), the head of the Zik-Zak corporation, Network 23's primary sponsor.
• Stew, Blipvert Victim (Brian Healy), a viewer whose head explodes from watching blipverts, impelling Edison Carter to investigate Network 23.

Development[edit]

The series was based on the Channel 4 British TV film produced by Chrysalis, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. Cinemax aired the UK pilot followed by a six-week run of highlights from The Max Headroom Show, a UK music video show where Headroom appears between music videos. ABC took an interest in the pilot and asked Chrysalis/Lakeside to produce the series for American audiences.^[1]

Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future was re-shot as a pilot program for a new series broadcast by the U.S. ABC television network. The pilot featured plot changes and some minor visual touches, but retained the same basic storyline. The only original cast retained for the series were Matt Frewer (Max Headroom/Edison Carter) and Amanda Pays (Theora Jones); a third original cast member, W. Morgan Sheppard, joined the series as 'Blank Reg' in later episodes. Among the non-original cast, Jeffrey Tambor co-starred as 'Murray', Edison Carter's neurotic producer.

The show went into production in late 1986 and ran for six episodes in the first season and eight in season two.

Episode listing[edit]

Season 1: 1987[edit]

Season 2: 1987–1988[edit]

Notes[edit]

• Although unaired as part of the original U.S run, 'Baby Grobags' was shown as part of the Australian series run.
• At least one unproduced script, 'Theora's Tale', has surfaced, as have the titles of two other stories ('The Trial' and 'Xmas'). Currently, little is known of 'The Trial' aside from its title; George R. R. Martin wrote 'Xmas', in pre-production at cancellation time; 'Theora's Tale' would have featured the 'Video Freedom Alliance' kidnapping Theora, and war in Antarctica, between rival advertisers Zik Zak and Zlin.

Reception[edit]

The series began as a mid-season replacement in spring of 1987, and did well enough to be renewed for the fall television season, but the viewer ratings could not be sustained in direct competition with CBS's Top 20 hit Dallas (also produced by Lorimar) and NBC's Top 30 hit Miami Vice.Max Headroom was canceled part-way into its second season. The entire series, along with two previously unbroadcast episodes, was rerun in spring 1988 during the Writers Guild of America strike. In the late 1990s, U.S. cable TV channels Bravo and the Sci-Fi Channel re-ran the series. Reruns also briefly appeared on TechTV in 2001. A cinema spin-off titled Max Headroom for President was announced with production intended to start in early 1988 in order to capitalize on that year's U.S. presidential election,^[2] but it was never made.

Max Headroom has been called 'the first cyberpunk television series', with 'deep roots in the Western philosophical tradition'. ^[3]

DVD release[edit]

Shout! Factory (under license from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) released Max Headroom: The Complete Series on DVD in the United States and Canada on August 10, 2010.^[4] The bonus features includes a round-table discussion with most of the major cast members (other than Matt Frewer), and interviews with the writers and producers.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'Stone, Morton and Jankel at the ICA'. Archived from the original on 2016-03-22. Retrieved 2014-10-03.
2. ^Marilyn Beck, 'Max Headroom On Way To B-b-big Screen', Chicago Tribune, Dec. 10, 1987; retrieved January 27, 2013
3. ^Hague, Angela (2002). Teleparody: Predicting/preventing the TV Discourse of Tomorrow. London New York: Wallflower Press. p. 68. ISBN1-903364-39-6. OCLC50497381.
4. ^Latchem, John (February 26, 2010). 'Shout! Factory Maxing Out'. Home Media Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2010.

Further reading[edit]

• Jenkins, Henry. 'Max Headroom'. Encyclopedia of Television. Museum of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
• Rapold, Nicolas (August 8, 2010). 'Look Who's Back: the Original Talking Head'. The New York Times.
• 'Max Headroom's Matt Frewer Interview'. G4. June 13, 2002.

External links[edit]

• Max Headroom on IMDb
• Max Headroom at epguides.com
• Max Headroom at TV.com
• Max Headroom at Curlie
• Max Headroom and intro to the series on YouTube
• The Max Headroom Chronicles—fan site