40 Fun Facts About Max Headroom

Billed as computer-generated, 1980s TV host Max Headroom was really created with which technique?

Prosthetic makeup, a moulded plastic suit and a blue screen did the work, because mid-1980s computers could not yet animate a talking human head for television.

Max Headroom is named after the last thing a crashing motorcyclist sees in his origin story, which is what?

A car park clearance sign reading Max. Headroom 2.3 m gave the character his name, and his creators liked that the phrase already hung over garage entrances all over Britain.

Which Canadian-American actor improvised his way into playing stuttering TV host Max Headroom?

Matt Frewer won the part with a long burst of comic improvisation, after a friend who had already auditioned suggested him to the producers.

Max Headroom became the stuttering face of which soft drink in a 1986 campaign aimed at young people?

New Coke hired Max to win back young drinkers who preferred a rival cola, and he took over as spokesman from comedian Bill Cosby.

A masked Max Headroom impersonator hijacked the signals of two TV stations in which American city?

Chicago viewers saw both intrusions on a single Sunday night in November 1987, about two hours apart, with the second lasting roughly 90 seconds.

A pirate in a Max Headroom mask interrupted a PBS station's showing of which British sci-fi series?

Doctor Who was partway through the 1977 serial Horror of Fang Rock when the masked figure cut in, and the episode simply resumed once the pirates stopped transmitting.

Which 1989 film sequel shows a glitching, Max Headroom-style Ronald Reagan as a video waiter in the Cafe '80s?

Back to the Future Part II staffs its nostalgia diner with video waiters, and computerised versions of Michael Jackson and the Ayatollah Khomeini work alongside the Reagan one.

Which rapper played a stuttering Max Headroom lookalike in a 2013 video nominated for three MTV awards?

Eminem borrowed the Max look for Rap God, a video that also nods to The Matrix and Pong and later passed a billion views.

Which fantasy novelist wrote a Max Headroom script that went unfilmed because the series was cancelled?

George R. R. Martin, years before Game of Thrones, wrote an episode about a shopping holiday called Xmas, but the axe fell while it was still in pre-production.

Max Headroom creators Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel later directed which film based on a hit video game?

Super Mario Bros. was the pair's second cinema feature, following a big-screen debut with the Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan thriller D.O.A.

Max Headroom made his 1985 debut in a one-hour science fiction film made for which British broadcaster?

Channel 4 wanted a host for a new music video programme and gave him an origin film first, launching The Max Headroom Show just two days later.

Which American network remade the Max Headroom origin story as a prime-time drama series in 1987?

ABC ordered the drama after seeing the British pilot, and it ran for two short seasons before being cancelled partway through the second.

Max Headroom has been called the first TV series in which science fiction subgenre, shared with Blade Runner?

Cyberpunk suits its world of teenage hackers, punk pirate broadcasters and corporations that rule through television.

In the Max Headroom series, the all-powerful networks have had which television feature outlawed?

Off switches are banned by a government that acts as the broadcasters' puppet, in a world where sets can also monitor their viewers' movements.

In the Max Headroom story, the AI host is copied from the mind of which crusading TV reporter?

Edison Carter and his on-screen twin are played by the same actor, though in the original British film the two never actually meet.

In Max Headroom, what name is given to the Network 23 broadcasts that can make some viewers explode?

Blipverts were designed to stop viewers switching away during the breaks, and the discovery of their deadly side effect sets the whole story in motion.

Which comic strip spoofed Max Headroom with Ron Headrest, a stuttering computer-generated Ronald Reagan?

Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau was a fan of the original, and named Headrest after the long naps the real Reagan was notorious for taking.

Which 1987 comedy film features Vinnie, a glitching robot henchman of Pizza the Hutt modelled on Max Headroom?

Spaceballs director Mel Brooks slipped the parody into his science fiction spoof in the same year the Max drama reached American screens.

Max Headroom has a cameo in which 2015 comedy about aliens attacking Earth as arcade game characters?

Pixels gave Max a brief message scene, and for once he really was computer-generated, built from a facial capture of the original actor's performance.

Max Headroom's classic look pairs a shiny dark suit with which famous style of Ray-Ban sunglasses?

Wayfarer shades joined the costume only because the bright contact lenses first used for the character became too painful to wear.

How did the hunt for the masked figures behind the 1987 Max Headroom signal hijackings end?

No one was ever identified, and once the five-year statute of limitations ran out in 1992 the pranksters could no longer be prosecuted anyway.

After his own programmes ended, Max Headroom made a late-1980s cameo on which long-running children's series?

Sesame Street hosted one of his last appearances of the decade, ahead of a cameo on a Comic Relief programme in the spring of 1989.

The actor behind Max Headroom later gave a speaking voice to which usually silent cartoon cat in a 1993 series?

The Pink Panther was given a humorous American accent to appeal to younger children, having spoken only briefly in two cartoons back in the 1960s.

In which 2011 science fiction novel does hero Wade Watts keep a Max Headroom AI in his OASIS account?

Ready Player One author Ernest Cline brought the Max AI back for the sequel, although Steven Spielberg's 2018 screen adaptation left the detail out.

Which English synth-pop group put Max Headroom's stuttering vocals on the 1986 hit single Paranoimia?

Art of Noise reached number 12 in the UK with the single, whose title blends the words paranoia and insomnia.

In the Max Headroom series, which Network 23 controller steers the star reporter through his investigations?

Theora Jones was poached from the rival World One Network, and the romance hinted at between her and the reporter was never explored before cancellation.

Which teenage prodigy runs Network 23's one-man research department and creates the AI in Max Headroom?

Bryce Lynch uploads a copy of the unconscious reporter's memory on his chairman's orders, to find out how much the journalist had uncovered.

Which actor, later a regular on The Larry Sanders Show, played anxious news producer Murray in Max Headroom?

Jeffrey Tambor played Murray as a man forever caught between backing his reporter's stories and keeping the executives upstairs happy.

Producer Peter Wagg tried and failed to sell a Max Headroom cinema film in which the AI host ran for which office?

President was the goal: Max Headroom for President was meant to start shooting in early 1988 to ride that year's American election, but it was never made.

Which subtitle of the original British Max Headroom film later opened every episode of the American series?

20 Minutes into the Future promised a tomorrow uncomfortably close to the present, one where corrupt corporations manipulate the public for ratings.

Which English actress, later Tina McGee in The Flash, played Network 23's star controller in Max Headroom?

Amanda Pays was one of only three cast members carried over from the British film to the American series, and she played McGee again in the 2014 version of The Flash.

The actor behind Max Headroom modelled the host's false chumminess on which Mary Tyler Moore Show anchorman?

Ted Baxter's phoney warmth was the model, because Max greets every stranger as though the two of them had been friends for a decade.

Which former Saturday Night Live cast member played scheming network chairman Ned Grossberg in Max Headroom?

Charles Rocket's villain is sacked once his deadly advertising scheme is exposed, then resurfaces a few episodes later at a rival broadcaster and schemes his way into the chair.

Which stand-up comedian, later a political talk show host, guest-starred in the Max Headroom episode Whackets?

Bill Maher appeared in a story about a game show laced with an addictive hidden signal, one strong enough to hook even Max himself.

Quicksilva's 1986 Max Headroom video game was written first for which British home computer?

ZX Spectrum owners got the game first, from the studio Binary Design, before it was converted for several rival machines.

Which pirate station does punk broadcaster Blank Reg run from a bus in the world of Max Headroom?

Big Time Television is run by Reg with his partner Dominique, and in the original British film it is the outlaw station that first puts Max on air.

Mistaken for computer animation, Max Headroom's debut won a 1986 BAFTA craft award in which category?

Graphics was the winning category, even though the only computer imagery on screen was the simple pattern of moving lines behind Max's head.

Max Headroom was cancelled after its ratings sank against Miami Vice and which hit CBS drama?

Dallas came from Lorimar, the same studio behind Max, so one of the studio's own hits helped to sink its newcomer.

Which American cable network aired The Max Headroom Show and then made its own Max Headroom talk show in New York?

Cinemax called its six-part revival The Original Max Talking Headroom Show and produced it without any British involvement.

Leftover Max Headroom episodes finally aired in spring 1988 during which Hollywood labour dispute?

A writers' strike was under way when ABC used two never-broadcast episodes of the cancelled drama as schedule fillers.