Max Headroom

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.

Doesn't hold up well at all. At times slow, other times heavy handed attempts at satire. The wannabe MTV graphics look very dated.

But when the humor hits its target, it's rewarding.

"Remember when we yelled No Future? Here we are." "A bad credit report? That's worse than murder!"

If you're not watching it for nostalgia, be prepared for long slow stretches.

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

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...

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.