The first episode was a somewhat shorter version of the original story, featuring some of the same actors later episodes continued the story of Max Headroom, reporter Edison Carter, and Network 23.ĭifferences between the British and American versions of the pilot. In 1987, Lorimar in the US acquired the rights to the character, and produced one season (fourteen episodes of about 45 minutes each) of a series based on the British movie. Max Headroom, played by a heavily made-up Matt Frewer, went on to host the series (although both the British series and the later American one featured computer graphics on a large scale, Max himself was never an actual computer image). Instead, it was produced as a feature-length made-for-TV movie, and was shown as a pilot for the music series, to general critical acclaim. The original plan was to split this up into five-minute segments and scatter it among the music videos, but they soon realised that this would be impractical. They invented the character of Max Headroom, and also commissioned a screenplay describing the fictional story of his origin. The story began in 1984, when Channel Four in Britain wanted to produce a really unusual music-video show, and decided to use a (fake) computer-generated host. Being an intelligent and sophisticated series, it was, of course, cancelled after one season. somebody knows a great hunk of hardware when they see one). Max Headroom was characterised by intelligent scripts a quirky sense of humour some serious speculation about the power and ethics of television a slightly satirical but intricately realised vision of the future with a gritty, 'Brazil'-like, 'retro-tech' style frequent references to traditional cyberpunk concepts ('ice', 'flatline', nanotechnology, and so on from William Gibson's books.) and some very good computer-generated special effects (mostly done on Amiga 1000s, by the way. Other actors in both versions where Amanda Pays as Theora Jones and William Morgan Sheppard as Blank Reg.

Matt Frewer played the main role as Edison Carter and Max Headroom in both series. It was directed by Francis Delia and Janet Greek. It was directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, and written by Steve Roberts.

There was two series, another in UK and another in USA. 'Max Headroom' science fiction drama was the first, and so far the only, cyberpunk TV series.

Where to watch max headroom