Max Headroom: one of sci-fi TV’s strangest characters deserves a comeback
I’m usually not one to advocate for more remakes, but when it comes to the gloriously strange and prophetic Max Headroom I’ll make an exception. If conducted in the right spirit, a remake of this 80s cyberpunk series – nay, pop culture phenomenon – would feel less like the return of a famous IP than the completion of a prophecy: a step forward into a Max Headroomian world, famously billed as taking place “20 minutes into the future”.
Premiering his career in 1985, Headroom was a real – but fake – TV host (still with me?) who was advertised as “the first computer-generated TV presenter”. Which he wasn’t: technology in the 80s was incapable of producing an actual CGI character, so actor Matt Frewer was hired to play the part, and through a combination of prosthetics and filming techniques was made to look like a glitching and stuttering computer-generated creation.
Headroom made his debut in a UK-produced TV origins movie which gave audiences his backstory. Then, after three seasons hosting a talk show and music video program – conducting bizarre interviews with celebrities such as Sting and Michael Caine – an American narrative series was commissioned that remade the UK movie and extended the narrative, retaining Frewer and running for two seasons.
The setup in the US version goes like this: Edison Carter (played by Frewer, and actually the protagonist) is an investigative journalist for high-rating Network 23, who works alongside long-suffering colleagues Theora (Amanda Pays) and his stressed-out producer Murray (Jeffrey Tambor). After Carter obtains incriminating evidence of the network’s involvement in a new form of commercials that cause some viewers’ heads to explode (go with it), he crashes his motorcycle into a sign that reads “MAX HEADROOM 2.3M”, an accident which comatoses him.
The network’s young tech guru (Chris Young) uploads all Carter’s memories into a computer and regenerates him on screen, with the intention of finding out what he knows before the real Carter wakes up. Enter Max Headroom, who pops up on various screens – sometimes to spur on the plot, sometimes for comic relief. The show is a zany dystopian narrative and an ode to old school journalistic integrity, following Carter’s Fox Mulder-ish desire to unearth the truth (then broadcast it).
A crumbling future world is illustrated using a familiar cyberpunk aesthetic crossed with a more junkyard, Mad Maxian look. In this society, many of our worst fears have come to pass: there’s an (even more) terrible divide between rich and poor and technology is being used for all sorts of nefarious purposes. The way the series explores creepy applications of technology makes it comparable, in today’s terms, to Black Mirror: another show that gazes into a crystal ball and sees all sorts of technological terrors.
For instance, in War (episode five, season one), a smaller network keeps mysteriously obtaining on-the-scene footage of terrorist attacks well before Network 23. Carter’s investigations lead him to discover that the supposed terrorists are actually TV producers, creating fake footage. In The Blanks (episode six, season one) a key plotline is resolved by Carter’s team creating a deepfake (decades before that word even existed) video of a politician announcing the release of hostages. In Deities (episode two, season two), Carter investigates a new age church that claims it can digitally resurrect people and give them a virtual afterlife (again, decades before real-life initiatives).
As both a cinephile and a virtual reality enthusiast, I love Dream Thieves (episode four, season two), which begins with Carter conducting a live broadcast in front of a decrepit, broken-down building. This, he explains, is what used to be called a cinema or picture palace. “It must’ve been a weird experience,” he says, “people watching the same screen and the same program.” Inside, the space is now being used for cutting edge VR-esque experiences, viewers donning lightweight headsets and drinking a potion to help them dream while awake. This technology is great, but, oh drat, it sends some people to the great beyond.
The show’s greatest innovation – or pseudo innovation – is of course the wild and weird Monsieur Headroom, an awesomely unreal character who pops up from time to time in events as varied as a real-life TV signal hijacking (in the late 80s) and a cameo in a 2015 Adam Sandler movie. Did I mention that Headroom was once interviewed by David Letterman and became a shill for Coca-Cola, appearing in a commercial directed by Ridley Scott?
Recent advancement of generative AI tools raises endless possibilities for a remake; perhaps Headroom can finally fulfill his destiny as a “real” CG being. Headroom was written as caustic and erratic, but a ChatGPT version could be genuinely unpredictable – delivering off-the-cuff responses crafted in real-time. Producers might be wary of live broadcasts, for good reasons, but that shouldn’t stop the belated comeback of one of sci-fi television’s strangest characters. His story is far from over.
Max Headroom is available on Apple TV and YouTube
