Max Headroom

Max Headroom was a film made especially for the UK's Channel 4 in 1984. The story is basically about an investigative journalist called Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) and his TV station Bosses. When Carter comes across a conspiracy inside his own TV station, he sets about to find the truth. In the meantime, bosses decide to remove him from the air, and replace him with a computer copy(Max). The problem is, he won't lie down and die.

It's a real 80's punk culture film. It's very dark, depressing, and for some reason a lot of it seems to take place at night or in the dark. Max lightens the mood with funny quips and puns.

Watch out for George Rossi, DC Lennox from The Bill, who plays Mahler.

as a child my brother and i used to sneak down to our cellar and watch unattendedly TV. in a "kunststuecke" (a tv series where they show movies normally not shown) we just by accident saw the original max headroom uk1995. man. it took us not even a thought to quickly make a philosophy out of it and to take this as our new expectation standard for this genre.

but boy, we never saw it again (not a single video-store holds this) and we were quite nervous when the remake (tv series) was announced ... what a disappointment! with their cold blooded commerciality they made a perfectly clean familiy movie out of the bleak retro ambiance of the original 57 min trip. worst, these are the versions the video-stores are filing.

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.

I happened on the "Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future" film on the cable channel Cinemax by accident in 1986 or so. The story, the setting, and the characters drew me in and I was blown away. Then I found out ABC would be doing a version with 3 of the main characters from the UK film - Matt Frewer, Amanda Pays, and William Morgan Sheppard as "Blank Reg".

While the ABC version was a good copy, like any copy, it just wasn't the same. The UK film, talk show, and ABC version spawned Max as a celebrity. He was everywhere including being a pitchman for Coke.

If you want the best "Max Headroom" experience, see the 1985 UK film. But if they ever broadcast the ABC series, see it.

What is ironic is that the motivation for the evil deeds of the corporate owners of Network 23 is what did in this series. It was put up against ratings giants "Dallas" and "Miami Vice" and canceled midway through their only season.