Max Headroom

Anyone who has Taped episodes, contact me. This was on FX?? When?

This was the most clever, prescient, witty, well produced, and subversive TV series ever created. I saw some of the shows, but then was expeditioning and missed many. MAX HEADROOM (the 85-86 TV series- I'm not familiar with the other permutations)was brilliant on 5 levels at once, like old Firesign Theatre skits, where one can watch again and again and see different levels each time. The money and production values were unprecedented (now each ER costs $14mil, God nows what Friends runs) in it's sly depiction of a media controlled hilarious nightmare world. Gonzo droll Matt Frewer did bang-up work as both a real TV reporter, controlled by the lush Amanda Pays via continuous links, and the sly double-entendreing computer generated Max. This was a searing critique of media run amok- everything was some brilliant trashing of some current or future trend (with Fear Factor losing me forever at the bull penis eating portion, they were prophetic). It saddens me that Frewer is trapped in lame para-psychological claptrap when he was so good in this unknown gem. Mike Hammerschlag

I rarely gush about TV shows, especially when they haven't been on in over a decade, but I gush about MH. This show was beyond cool, it was beyond hip, and it was far too intelligent to have been on the air in the late 80s. I was lucky enough to be able to catch MH in sindication on cable a few years ago and to validate my high opinions of the show. It was still brilliant. A few episode summaries might help to clarify:

Blank Reg (a blank is a person who has been removed from the corporate system, they have few rights, but the 'powers that be' can't easily find them) is put on trial for hacking (a major crime). The court is a gameshow with gameshow host for a judge and an opinion poll for a jury. I am glad to see how far off this is from reality - sarcasm :(

Another episode involved a sport called rake-boarding, where skateboarders would attempt to disembowel each other while performing nifty stunts. Thank god mass media has not opted for gladiatorial shows...

My question was never why this show got cancelled, but who the hell got the idea to put it on the air in the first place. I mean, this was a show whose primary entertainment value was in skewering the very medium which presented it. I can't believe that the mucky-mucks even allowed this to be seen, nevertheless broadcast.

Each show was intelligent, witty and eerily prescient. I suppose the final irony was that the show itself was cancelled, but the problems that it warned us about have come true. If you get the chance to see the extant shows, see them. They are among the only truly visionary and artistic and entertaining things to have been on stupid-box since its inception.

Here's a piece of trivia. Max Headroom was filmed at 30 frames a second instead of the standard 24 frames a second. One of the reasons was so the series could more easily incorporate video with film, but a welcomed side-effect was that it gave the show a Hi-Def, futuristic look on 1980s television. It really did look different from any other show on TV.

What's interesting is that some current shows on video shoot at 24 or 25 frames a second to look more like film. It would be interesting to see what some filmed shows would look like in HDTV if they were shot at at 30 frames a second. You would get true HD.

It "dawned" on me finally where I had seen the actor named "Frank" (Matt Frewer) from "Dawn of the Dead" (2004) and all these memories of my childhood came back (born in '79). I remember I watched it faithfully and although I was way too young to actually understand the satyric nature of the show, I was mesmerized by the early use of CG on the idiot-box. I can still see that guys head and the way the computer used to "chunk" when he talked. Funny how now, almost two decades later, we're still dealing with chunking in streaming audio and video feeds. Somebody knew which way the world was headed. Just a great show and I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane

Everyone seems to remember Max Headroom, the character and Coke pitchman, but a lot of people forget about the series Max was in. The other thing a lot of people forget is that Max in the TV screen was _not_ cgi; Max was pre-cgi, and Matt Frewer did incredibly good acting as Max. Besides that, Matt also was the lead in the series and did a lot of work as Edison Carter as well as Max.

The series didn't last nearly long enough for me; the original title, "Twenty Minutes Into the Future" is very accurate-- technologically, stylistically, and in terms of content and post-production, "Max Headroom" was ahead of its time. It was a mid-season replacement and never found its audience; the database lists the tv-movie, the series (14 or 15 eps), and the original talk show which started the whole thing. I'm still amazed at the wisdom (or lack thereof) of television execs who can cancel a series halfway through a season. Then again, "Max Headroom" was about television, making some eerily accurate predictions (CNN, tabloid talk shows), and television execs are nothing if not chickens.

Still, it would be too, too cool to see Max pop up to comment about the millennium...