710 The Max Headroom Show

First  viewed  ;  April  1985

There  are  few  more  identifiably  eighties  icons  than  Max  if  only  as  a  sort  of  test  card  for  how  far  computer  graphics  had  come  on  by  1985.

Max  was  a  product  of  the  boom  in  promotional  videos; both  his  creators,  Rocky  Morton  and  Annabel  Jankel , were  involved  in  the  business  and  launched  the  character  in  an  hour-long  TV  drama  set  in  a  dystopian  future. Canadian  actor  Matt  Frewer   played  an  investigative  reporter  who  meets  with  a  nasty  accident . While  comatose  his  brain  waves  are  digitally  recorded  by  a  computer  geek  and  used  to  launch  a  virtual  version   which  soon  turns  out  to  have  an  eccentric  life  of  its  own. I  wasn't  sufficiently  enticed  to  watch  the  original  programme.

The  character  was  then  used  to  host  an  early  Saturday  evening  show  starting  the  following  week  on  Channel  Four. It  was  very  similar  to  Rock n. America   with   Max  providing  comic  inserts  in  between  pop  videos. Frewer  remained  in  the  role  and  was  allowed  creative  input  into  the  character  which  he  based  on  a  particularly  insincere  and  smarmy  US  TV  host. Because  VR  was  still  in  its  infancy,  his  appearance  was  not  actually  computer-generated  at  all  and  required  Frewer  to  spend  many  hours  virtually  immobilised  in  latex.

I  still  wasn't  in  from  the  beginning  and  remember  my  mum  shouting  me  down  from  upstairs  wondering  why  I  wasn't  watching  a  programme  that  showed  a  lot  of  music  videos. It  never  became  appointment  TV  for  me ; I  found  Max's  smart  alec  persona  irritating  as  of  course  it  was  meant  to  be. Nevertheless,  it  considerably  boosted  Channel  Four's  viewing  figures.

By  the  time  of  the  second  season  the  producers  had  realised  the  potential  of  Max  as  an  interviewer  who  could  ask  questions  human  hosts  would   avoid. Sting  was  one  of  the  initial  victims. The  road  to  Mrs  Merton  starts  here.

The  third  and  final  season  was  early  in  1987. One  of  the  very  last  episodes  featured  Max  interviewing  Oliver  Reed  not  long  after  his  notorious  appearance  on  Aspel  &  Company. On  this  occasion  Reed  was  debonair, completely  sober  and  unruffled  by  anything  Max  could  throw  at  him.

By  then  the  producers  felt  that  the  show  had  run  its  course. The  latter  two  seasons  had  been  shown  in  the  U.S.  but  not  made  much  impact  in  a  nation  saturated  by  MTV's  fare. Instead  ABC  went  back  to  source  and  re-shot  the  pilot  retaining  Frewer  but  making  some  plot  changes. It  launched  Max  Headroom , a  sci-fi  adventure  series  which  ran  for  two  seasons  in  1987-88. If  this  was  ever  shown  in  the  UK,  I  never  saw  it.