And just who exactly is Max Headroom? The answer starts with Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), a no-nonsense star reporter for Network 23. He has a talent for digging up a deadly secret that could shake up his station's dominion over its viewers. This is just the kind of breaking news that network big wheels like to bury.
After Edison is pulled from a story, he's immediately suspicious, especially when he's also chased away from a secret room. Escaping from the scene, he crashes his motorcycle, and Network 23's one-man tech department/teenage computer hacker Bryce Lynch (Chris Young) takes advantage of Edison’s misfortune. Bryce creates a computer-generated image of the unconscious reporter, and the cyber-result is a freewheeling personality who calls himself Max Headroom ("Max. Headroom. 2.7 m." – the maximum clearance vehicle height – were the last words Edison glimpsed before his crash into a road barrier).
The brash Max is also portrayed by Frewer, thanks to cutting-edge computer effects, and is an unpredictable, darkly humorous guy – who resides in a TV set, of course! A computer glitch provides his distinctive, sometimes s-s-s-stammering speech pattern. He serves as Edison's unfiltered, outspoken alter ego, who makes no secret of his contempt for the TV business. Even as Edison recovers and continues his investigative journalistic quest, Max remains an unhinged presence, always ready with a quip that hits home. "You know how to tell when a network president is lying?'" asks Max. "His lips move."
The series also starred Amanda Pays as Theora Jones, Edison's computer-savvy partner; W. Morgan Sheppard as "Blank Reg," a buddy who broadcasts underground news from his bus; and Jeffrey Tambour as Murray, Edison's harried, neurotic boss. Pays, Sheppherd and Frewer reprised their roles from the British film that inspired the series:
Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. The series first appeared on ABC as a mid-season replacement in 1987, and quickly became a hit, returning in the fall and airing until 1988.
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