The original British telefilm appeared just one year after the publication of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the novel that brought public attention to the cyberpunk movement and introduced the term “cyberspace” into the English language. Influenced by films such as The Road Warrior and Bladerunner, the cyberpunks adopted a taut, intense, and pulpy writing style based on brisk yet detailed representations of a near future populated by multinational corporations, colorful youth gangs, and computer-hacker protagonists. Their most important theme was the total fusion of human and machine intelligences. Writers such as Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, and Pat Cadigan developed a shared set of themes and images that were freely adopted by Max Headroom.

Set “20 minutes in the future,” Max Headroom depicts a society of harsh class inequalities, where predators roam the street looking for unsuspecting citizens who can be sold for parts to black-market “body banks.” Max inhabits a world ruled by Zic-Zac and other powerful corporations locked in a ruthless competition for consumer dollars and television rating points. In the opening episode, Network 22 dominates the airwaves through its use of blipverts, which compress 30 seconds of commercial information into three seconds. Blipverts can cause neural overstimulation and (more rarely) spontaneous combustion in more sedate viewers. Other episodes center around the high crime of zipping (interrupting a network signal) and neurostim (a cheap burger pack giveaway that hypnotizes people into irrational acts of consumption). We encounter blanks, a subversive underground of have-nots who have somehow dodged incorporation into the massive data banks kept on individual citizens.

At the core of this dizzying and colorful world is Edison Carter, an idealistic Network 24 reporter who takes his portable minicam into the streets and the boardrooms to expose corruption and consumer exploitation, which, in most episodes, lead him back to the front offices of his own network. Edison’s path is guided by Theora Jones, his computer operator, whose hacker skills allow him to stay one step ahead of the security systems—at least most of the time—and Bryce Lynch, the amoral boy wonder and computer wizard. Edison is aided in his adventures by Blank Reg, the punked-out head of a pirate television operation, BigTime Television. Edison’s alter ego, Max Headroom, is a cybernetic imprint of the reporter’s memories and personality who comes to “life” within computers, television programs, and other electronic environments. There he becomes noted for his sputtering speech style, his disrespect for authority, and his penchant for profound non sequiturs.

Critics admired the series’ self-reflexivity, its willingness to pose questions about television networks and their often unethical and cynical exploitation of the ratings game, and its parody of game shows, political advertising, televangelism, news coverage, and commercials. In fluenced by Music Television (MTV), the series’ quick-paced editing and intense visual style were also viewed as innovative, creating a televisual equivalent of the vivid and intense cyberpunk writing style. This series’ self-conscious parody of television conventions and its conception of a “society of spectacle” was considered emblematic of the “postmodern condition,” making it a favorite of academic writers as well. Their interest was only intensified by Max’s move from science fiction to advertising and to talk television, where this nonhuman celebrity (commodity) traded barbed comments with other talk show–made celebrities, such as Doctor Ruth, Robin Leach, Don King, and Paul Shaffer. Subsequent series, such as Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms or VR, have sought to bring aspects of cyberpunk to television, but none have done it with Max Headroom’s verve, imagination, and faithfulness to core cyberpunk themes.