MAX HEADROOM — THE COMPLETE SERIES: Future Shock’s Nostalgic Afterglow

Despite its ded­i­cated cult fol­low­ing, the rest of the world seems to remem­ber Max Headroom as an 1980’s fad or a mar­ket­ing gim­mick.  They have good rea­son for this because the Max Headroom image and char­ac­ter was aggres­sively mar­keted, with this tele­vi­sual appari­tion serv­ing as every­thing from a pitch­man for New Coke to a chat show host.  There was even an inci­dent where a video pirate inter­rupted some tele­vi­sion broad­casts in Chicago to yuk it up while wear­ing a Max Headroom mask.

The afore­men­tioned mar­ket­ing bar­rage makes it easy to for­get how good the actual pro­gram­ming involv­ing the Max Headroom con­cept was.  The char­ac­ter was orig­i­nally cre­ated to host a music video show in the U.K. and an accom­pa­ny­ing tele­vi­sion film was pro­duced to explain his ori­gin story.  The result became an inter­na­tional phe­nom­e­non cul­mi­nat­ing in a series that ran on ABC for two abbre­vi­ated sea­sons dur­ing 1987 and 1988.  The lat­ter for­mat offered the cre­ative minds behind the show the most expan­sive pos­si­bil­ity to explore their future-shock con­cepts and the result was one of the best, most forward-thinking and sub­ver­sive sci­ence fic­tion shows ever telecast.

The series kicks off with a con­densed redux of the Max Headroom ori­gin story: Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) is an inves­tiga­tive tele-journalist with a brash, hard-hitting style that has made him the star of Network 23.  While try­ing to get to the bot­tom of a citizen’s mys­te­ri­ous death, he stum­bles across a con­spir­acy involv­ing “blipverts.”  This name refers to a 30-second ad that is com­pressed into 3 sec­onds.  The results are effec­tive but they also have the unfor­tu­nate side effect of mak­ing more seden­tary view­ers explode.

Unfortunately for Edison, his med­dling is dis­cov­ered by Grossberg (Charles Rocket), the slea­zoid Network 23 exec who cooked up the “blipvert” con­cept.  He tries to get some secu­rity goons to bump Edison off and Edison is injured in a motor­cy­cle crash while try­ing to escape (the last thing he sees are the words “Max Headroom” on a secu­rity gate).  Grossberg has the network’s research/development genius, a 13 year-old named Bryce (Chris Young), to scan Edison’s brain while he’s uncon­scious and then feed the results into an exper­i­men­tal personality-simulator pro­gram.  The result is Max Headroom, a jit­tery, motor­mouthed “talk­ing head” with a computer-animated face and part of Edison’s personality.

Meanwhile, Edison’s body is shipped off to be sold for parts at a body bank but he is saved in the nick of time by Edison’s new part­ner, the lovely Theora Jones (Amanda Pays).  With the help of Theora and show pro­ducer Murray (Jeffrey Tambor), Edison gets it together in time to con­front Grossberg.  The final piece of the puz­zle is sup­plied by Edison’s new alter ego, Max, who runs freely within the network’s com­puter sys­tems and lends sup­port in a way that’s deranged and on-target all at once.

Viewed today, this pilot episode has a cer­tain retro charm thanks to its music video-derived look but it’s amaz­ing how forward-thinking it was in how it antic­i­pates vir­tual real­ity, the way up-to-the-moment mar­ket­ing dri­ves cor­po­rate think­ing and a world where mul­ti­ple com­puter plat­forms con­trol every ele­ment of life.  It’s also hard to believe that some­thing this crit­i­cal of cor­po­rate think­ing and tele­vi­sion net­works made it onto late-1980’s televsion.

The rest of the sea­son con­tin­ues along sim­i­lar lines: each episode is a self-contained affair that tips its cap to the require­ments of episodic tele­vi­sion by hav­ing Edison face off with crisis/conspiracy of the week.  However, the show’s cre­ators wisely twist the for­mat to fit their own philo­soph­i­cal agenda.  There are episodes that deal with the moral­ity of tel­e­van­ge­lism (“Deities”), the some­times co-dependent rela­tion­ship between ter­ror­ists and news net­works (“War”) and a cri­tique of genetic engi­neer­ing (“Baby Grobags”).  These sto­ry­lines are also dense with the details of a fully-conceived future world that is some­times over­whelm­ing, but in a good way: it’s work to keep up with this show’s con­cep­tual speed but it’s also very rewarding.

And that’s not where the nar­ra­tive com­plex­ity ends.  Each episode fea­tures a sub­plot that revolves around the per­sonal lives of its char­ac­ters.  For instance, “Dream Thieves” has Edison and Murray con­fronting how their per­sonal ambi­tions neg­a­tively impacted the life of a for­mer co-worker and “Neurostim” fea­tures a dra­mat­i­cally vivid sub­plot in which Edison is forced to come to terms with his feel­ings about hav­ing to share his life and career with his uncon­trol­lable alter ego, Max.  Each sto­ry­line is rich enough that it could have been expanded to feature-length yet it is dis­ci­plined enough to play sat­is­fac­to­rily within a 45-minute time frame.  Given the prob­lems with con­sis­tency that dogs even the most clas­sic of tele­vi­sion shows, this is a big, big achievement.

It helps that Max Headroom boasts a superla­tive pro­duc­tion design and visu­als for its era.  The future world pre­sented here takes con­cep­tual and visual cues from Blade Runner and Brazil, with dashes of The Road Warrior and Videodrome thrown in for good mea­sure, but it man­ages to blend these influ­ences into a coher­ent and con­vinc­ing style.  Early com­puter ani­ma­tion is used to impres­sive, narrative-advancing effect and fans of old-school visual tech­niques will be delighted by the scale-model shots used to depict the show’s futur­is­tic metropolis.

However, the key ele­ment that sells Max Headroom is the qual­ity of its per­for­mances.  The title fig­ure may be the show’s call­ing card but all the sup­port­ing cast turn in vivid, richly-drawn per­for­mances: Pays does a sub­tle job of sell­ing Theora’s intel­li­gence and moral cen­ter, Tambor deliv­ers both dead­pan comic tim­ing and sur­prise flashes of dra­matic inten­sity as Murray and Young brings a subtly-drawn human­ity to his boy-genius char­ac­ter.  There are also dis­tinc­tive per­for­mances in key episodes by Rocket, who deliv­ers a sly vari­a­tion on the “evil exec­u­tive” con­ceit as Grossberg, and also by William Morgan Sheppard as Blank Reg, an aging rocker with a charm­ingly rebel­lious per­sona who runs his own low-power t.v. sta­tion in the show’s for­bid­den zone.   The quick-eyed will also notice Howard Sherman (Bub from Day Of The Dead!) pop­ping up as a network-owned politi­cian and one-off per­for­mances by every­one from Dayle Haddon to Bill Maher.

That said, the show is truly dri­ven by Matt Frewer’s dual per­for­mance as Edison and Max.  Frewer invests Edison with a mix­ture of brood­ing inten­sity and world-weary sar­casm, mak­ing him a “wiseass with a heart” that we can root for.   He also fit­tingly uses Max to bal­ance out Edison’s single-mindedness by invest­ing him with carefully-controlled bursts of wacked-out humor and a knack for impro­vised, free-associative quips that often com­ment iron­i­cally on the episode’s events.  It’s a tes­ta­ment to both Frewer’s per­for­mance and the qual­ity of the writ­ing that Max never comes off as a cheap gim­mick.  This char­ac­ter is used at a dif­fer­ent times as a Greek cho­rus, a con­science to dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters and a fea­tured player within the show’s ensem­ble.  Thanks to Frewer’s comedic gifts, Max fills these mul­ti­ple roles with ease.

In short, Max Headroom is one of the all-time greats in the world of science-fiction tele­vi­sion.  If you thought he was just a gim­mick, think again — and check out this fas­ci­nat­ing show to get the full story.

Max Headroom: The Complete Series [Bundle] Order from ShoutFactory.com and get a limited-edition 8″ x 10″ glossy cast shot! Offer valid while sup­plies last.