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Knight Rider vs Max Headroom · The Mitchell Brothers Revisit

• Ollie: There's lots going on, there? Yeah, he's Luke: He's an incel. His light rider an incel. Ollie: an incel and he's going around on his electrophoil and he's single-handedly patrolling the English Channel. Luke: English channel. Nice. This is the Mitchell Brothers Revisit, where two siblings revisit the TV shows that shaped their childhood and ask what it all meant then and what it means now. My name's Luke Mitchell, and I'm here with my brother, Oliver Mitchell, and my sensors indicate that you will enjoy this podcast. How was that for a kit? Ollie: Hey buddy! Luke: How was that for a kit? Hey buddy. Hey buddy. Ollie: How are you? Luke: I'm very well, Oliver. How's my kit? Ollie: It's very good and it's funny because I had in mind to tell you that I was very delight like like like like delighted to be here with you. I've had a great week watching the shows and I'm really looking forward to getting into this with you pal. Luke: Good stuff. All right, so today we're looking at Knight Rider, the 1980s action series featuring, of course, David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight. He's a high tech crime fighter who fights injustice alongside Kit, who's really the star of the show, isn't it, Kit? The artificially intelligent talking car. And then this is very much on an AI theme this week. Facing off against Knight Rider, we're revisiting the work. of the world's first computer-generated TV host, Channel 4's The Max Headroom Show and an episode from 1985. And as you know, each week we pick a specific episode of each show, we independently watch it, and then we meet back here to share our thoughts. I've done the background digging to bring some interesting trivia to the chat, and Oliver's picked out his key talking points for discussion. And at the end of the pod, I'm gonna ask Oliver to come back to the commissioner's office of Mitch Flick's productions and tell us. Which one is he recommending for a modern day reboot? Ollie: As you know, I said I love the shows and I know that you love digging into the quarry of the 1980s. So what have you picked out for us with Knight Rider that we're going to enjoy today? Luke: Yeah, so we're gonna start off with Knight Rider. I hope that you remember that at the end of that episode that we watched, you saw a brief exchange between Michael and Bonnie that suggested some sort of romantic connection. You are going to like discovering whether or not love actually blossomed. And if it did, what did Michael's wife think about it? Yes, early bombshell. Michael actually had a wife in the show. Do remember him sat in that car talking about all his... Lovers that he was getting around with, Naughty boy. Ollie: Yeah, right at the start of the episode, yeah. In fact, Kit was his moral conscience, wasn't he? Luke: Yeah, Kit does have that. He's got that in him. You're going to enjoy lifting up the bonnet on Kit and discovering the realities of actually filming an action adventure about a multi-featured talking car. Because this was an age before CGI, wasn't it? So everything had to be done manually and physically. And you're going to be shocked to discover the controversial truth about what I would say is TV's coolest theme tune. All right, so just to put this into context, the episode we watch, Trust Doesn't Rust, is a particularly appropriate Knight Rider episode to discuss right now because the key idea is the question, what happens when you build an intelligent machine and then you give it the wrong objective? So in 1982, that was basically science fiction, wasn't it? But today it sounds very familiar to the kinds of discussions that we have. about AI safety. In 1982, they were looking at an amazing future, a car that can think, talk and drive for itself. And now, unbelievably, we're actually here. So, Knight Rider premiered on NBC in September 1982. And this episode that we looked at, it was the ninth of the first season. There were four seasons altogether. And that was broadcast on or in November 1982. This was when America was entering into the Ronald Reagan era. The Cold War was still very real. Consumer technology was advancing rapidly and there was a developing public fascination with computers and automation and robotics and the idea that technology was going to transform everyday life, which right now we could say it has. So looking at this particular show, what were your memories before we watched it of Knight Rider? Ollie: Well, the memories get jogged, don't they, by watching it? So let's just start with the theme tune. know, if that theme tune came on the radio, it would be instantaneously memorable or recognisable as the Knight Rider theme tune without any context. And so when I watched those opening credits and the theme tune started, I mean, that was, it just took me there. It was beautiful. But you know, the stylings of the car. I being really interested in that similar actually to the stylings of the van in the A-Team, you know, and probably took me back to children's toys as well. I remember having the A-Team van as a child actually. Probably the Knight Rider car would have been available. And of course the stylings of Hasselhoff himself with his excellent combing and hair. Yeah. Luke: Yeah, do remember liking the show when you were younger? Ollie: No, no not at all. Luke: No, you don't remember Ollie: No, I was... Luke: it being an essential watch. Ollie: No, no. two shows that kind of sculpted my memory of childhood in terms of American imports was The A-Team and Airwolf. They're Luke: Yeah. Ollie: the two, yeah. Luke: Yeah. Yeah, the theme tune, as you mentioned, it's just so good. It's so, there's very few tunes that sort of instantly just fill you with this, a sensational feeling. Like I went for a walk just before we came onto this call and I'm like, I put it on just to hype myself up and I just Ollie: You Luke: instantly wanted to start solving crimes in the park. There wasn't a lot of Ollie: were they ready to solve? Luke: offer. There was a bit of litter around by one of the bins that someone hadn't put into the bin. Some Monster Energy drink cans lying there and a couple of scratch cards. But yeah, now it's an amazing thing. You've got that Knight Rider theme tune. It's got to be the coolest piece of music that's ever been made. And then you've got that visual intro, the beautiful sleek black car tearing across the Mojave Desert as sunset falls. So that track was created by a jobbing TV composer called Stu Phillips, who was attached to the producer of Knight Rider, Glenn Larson. When I say attached, I mean, they worked together all the time on projects. They worked for about 10 years before this, including on Battlestar Galactica. And before that, this is where it gets crazy, because I'm noticing even in our second episode, all of the connections between different programs. So Stu Phillips bizarrely had been a composer. He composed music on the monkeys, which we discussed last week. He did all of the non pop song stuff. He did all the background music. I was astonished that he created this track for Knight Rider, this iconic music in just less than a week until I discovered that it isn't exactly an original composition. So what it is really is a mashup. And it's a very good mashup, but it's a mashup of a 1872 French orchestral piece. And it's alongside a German synth wave track from 1982. He wasn't a famous artist, he was a quite obscure German composer. And I was wondering how Stu Phillips would have found out about this piece of music. But when you listen to the two tracks, it's absolutely undeniable that he has been influenced by them. Ollie: Really, really interesting and it put me in mind. Are you aware that there was a 2008 reboot of Knight Rider? Luke: Yes. Ollie: And what they do to the theme tune is unforgivable. Yeah, Yeah, Luke: Sacrilege. Is it? I'll have to listen to it. Ollie: I the opening credits as well as a little bit of one of the shows, but yeah, the opening credits, it's not good. Luke: I'll have to check that one out. But in terms of him copying and taking up someone else's work, my response is that good artists copy and great artists steal. That's my response. Ollie: Okay. Luke: It's a good response, isn't it? Ollie: Yeah, yeah. Luke: It's not Picasso's response, it's my response. Ollie: Is that Picasso, is it? Luke: I thought it'd be funny to nick it. Ollie: OK, let's have a little think about the origins of Knight Rider then. How did they even conceive the notion of a talking car to begin with? Luke: I mentioned Glenn Larson, who Stu Phillips worked with. He was one of the most prolific American TV producers at that time. And he'd already been involved with something called McLeod, Quincy, Battlestar Galactica, as I mentioned, Magnum, P.I. and BJ and the Bear. I was hoping Bonnie Blue's not listening to this. I just don't want to give her any more ideas. Anyway, there was this NBC executive who was called Brandon Tarkikoff, who was interested in the idea of creating a TV hero who basically was an attractive, you know how it was in these in this sort of like quite shallow, it was known as a sort of shallow period, wasn't it culturally in the 80s, early 80s. He was like, let's get in an attractive young actor. But he doesn't necessarily, because he's going to be attractive, he's assuming he's not going to be like the best actor in the world. So they don't want him to have to. carry lots of dialogue through the show. So he joked, this guy, Brandon Tarkatov, joked about the idea of maybe having a car that could do the talking for him. So that's how it started. And then this idea makes its way to Larsen, the producer, to sort of work it up further. And his suggestion is to base the whole concept on the model of another successful historical show, The Lone Ranger. So you've got, in The Lone Ranger, you've got a man, traveling around, helping people, righting wrongs, who's on an intelligent horse, let's just change it up and have an intelligent car. But he thought that it shouldn't be played completely straight because the idea of a talking supercar fighting crime would be viewed as ridiculous So that's why there's this kind of tongue-in-cheek humour and playful relationship between Michael and Kit, because it can't be completely serious. Ollie: That really adds a lovely dimension to it anyway, though, doesn't it? It kind of takes it beyond, I guess, they, the low ranger and into a new thing of its own. It's nice. So we've got that construct then of this kind of dual relationship between Michael and Kit. Let's focus on Michael. You mentioned the Mojave Desert. I thought that those opening titles were going for some sort of maverick Mad Max figure. In fact, the opening titles are like... a young loner in a shadowy world. He's anything but, isn't he? He's anything but. They've absolutely got the casting wrong if that's what they were going for because he's an affable, friendly young man who's actually got quite a few friends. Luke: Maybe he's carrying over some baggage from his past that you can't get rid of in terms of, I'm just a friendly guy and I'm gonna keep chatting to people and making friends. Do you know about the backstory to Michael? Ollie: very helpfully. And this is one of the things, I know we're going to talk about the episodes in a bit more detail later, but one of the great things the episode does is its exposition, isn't it? When you have Devin Miles, the head of the crime unit, very helpfully leading the audience, bringing the audience along with him by saying, you were found in the desert six months, when we found you in the desert six months ago. So that's great. Luke: Fill some gaps in. Yes. Yeah, he was found by Wilton Knight of Knight Industries. So Michael, so he had a different identity before he used to be Michael Long. And this is where his wife comes into it actually. So he was Michael Long, who was an undercover police officer who got shot in the face and he was left for dead. And the billionaire industrialist Wilton Knight finds him lying almost dead in the desert. And the reason he didn't die is because he had a metal plate. This is like going even further back in the story. He has a metal plate installed into his skull after Vietnam. He had a Vietnam war wound. Yeah, yeah, it saved him. So Knight Ollie: And the bullet hit the metal plate? Luke: reconstructs him surgically. He's given a new face. This is a weird thing. He actually is given the face that resembles Wilton Knight when he was younger. Ollie: Right. Luke: So he's given a new face and he's given a new identity and a new mission. He becomes Michael Knight and he's working for the Foundation for Law and Government or FLAG. And he's part private detective, part action hero and part cowboy. He's deliberately given an average IQ I think so that that can contrast with Kit's intelligence. He drives, he fights, he flirts and he improvises and he occasionally does things that Kit will question. Kit stands for Knight Industries 2000. And I was like, why is it called that? They just chose 2000 because it sounds futuristic. There's no other reason. He's an artificially intelligent, virtually indestructible, he's a Pontiac Trans Am car. So I was also wondering, what is this car like? Have they made it for the show? It's a model of car that you could have bought at that time. Ollie: Well, in fact, when you watch, a little bit of digging around on YouTube, lots of people have got their videos of doing up Pontiac transams in the style of kit. You know, Luke: Cool. Ollie: it's almost like ironically kit car projects that people get involved with. Yeah. Luke: they retired the brand Pontiac. It was owned by General Motors. And there was a requirement for General Motors to get rid of a load of their brands at some point in, I think it was the late 90s or no, early 2000s. And they chose to get rid of Pontiac. They also got rid of, do you remember Hummers? lot popular with rap stars. Yeah, you Ollie: Mm-hmm. Yep. Luke: don't see, you don't get Hummers anymore. They got rid of those. Ollie: You'll still see loads of them knocking around in the US though, wouldn't you? There'll still be a Luke: I guess so. Ollie: legacy of volume. Luke: So it's a Pontiac Trans Am with autonomous driving, voice communication. It's got its sophisticated sensors and surveillance capabilities, an array of different gadgets. But Ollie: Talking of the gadgets, Luke: yeah. Ollie: that memory of the red light flashing up every time Kit speaks, that was instantaneous of, I remember that, yeah, that was brilliant. And fun, Luke: Yeah, the pulsing red light. Ollie: yeah. Luke: As much as it's about the technology, it's also his personality, isn't it? Like, why did they give him that particular personality? He's got this kind of clipped upper-class authority. He's cautious, slightly pompous, slightly exasperated English butler who also happens to be a supercomputer. Ollie: Did know that it was Val Kilmer who did the Kit voice in the 2008 reboot? Luke: No, and what does it sound like? Ollie: Yeah, like a little bit. Yeah, I guess he is putting on an elevated poshness to his voice but not significantly so that it would distance you from knowing it as Valkema. Kill me. Luke: Is it in any way camp? Because I've definitely felt that this is quite camp. I don't know if it was just the contrast with Carr, who we should mention in this particular episode was a kind of rival exactly the same model as Kit, but a different programming. But we'll talk about that later. But Carr was given a voice and a personality that's masculine and aggressive. Ollie: rough. Luke: Yeah. Did you think Kit was quite camp? It struck me immediately. Ollie: Not really, no, I know that. Luke: I think I'm on my own here because I couldn't see anyone else talking about it. Ollie: No, no, I saw on your show notes, is Kit gay and I just wrote no. Luke: He's fussy. Ollie: I he has- Luke: Not to stereotype, but he's very fussy. He's very sensitive. He gets jealous when Michael gets attention. He's very kind of like... Well, I guess his job is to preserve Michael, to keep Michael, but he's very kind of like, I don't think you should be doing that, Michael. Ollie: He just cares about him. Although I did say, as Kit asserts throughout the episode, he has no sentient feelings. So he can't be gay, nor can he really care. But I guess it's to do with his programming, isn't it? He's programmed to look after the lesser intelligent Michael. Luke: That's right, that's his job. I must preserve Michael. Ollie: and feelings don't get in the way. Luke: I found it. mean, like you say, when you get when you break it down, it does come back to the programming of the both Kit and Car. But I was thinking there's a lot of emotional talk like I think Michael talks to Kit about or is it Car? But to one of them about having an ego. that's you're going to get hurt your ego. And I was thinking, where's Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Luke: the line here between they surely don't have egos, but they have been programmed with personalities. Ollie: He denies having an ego though, doesn't he, when Michael presents that as a possibility. Luke: I mean, there's a few other characters, but the only one that should probably be mentioned is Bonnie, Dr. Bonnie Barstow, who is actually Keef's, sorry, Keef. is actually Kit's chief engineer and mechanic. So she's the person who understands the machine of Kit technically and becomes the person who's gonna have to fix the consequences of Michael's adventures. And as you can imagine on every show and there were 90 odd shows made, Kit's gonna get bashed up quite a lot on need repairing. And Michael's hasn't got the brains to do that, has he? Ollie: No, it'd be good if it was called Keith by the way. was just trying to Luke: Yeah. Ollie: think about what the acronym would be. Luke: So her role in the show, is continually reminding us that somebody built Kit and maintains him and modifies him. Ollie: Interesting that, obviously back in 1982, women being scientists and engineers or mechanics in any shape or form would have been really rare. But you obviously need Bonnie for the frisson of love interest. So where's she going to come in? She's got to have a significant role to be around Michael enough to create that love interest, but she can't be the role of Devon Miles. She can't be heading up the crime unit, can she? that would track either. I guess enables her to put her into a uniform. You know, that's always quite alluring, isn't it? White boiler suit. Luke: Right, a boiler suit. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: Yeah, although we might as well talk about that now in terms of the relationship. I mentioned Ollie: Okay. Luke: at the start that there's this suggestion, it's a very brief suggestion, isn't it? The locking of eyes at the end of this episode, that there may be some romantic involvement or interest. That never materialized after this. So this is coming towards the end of the season one and... certainly from season two onwards, their relationship was more like a brother and sister. The reason's thought to be that the original writer, that Larson, who had been deeply involved in the show and then took a little bit of a step back, or the producer and writer, he was the one that started off the idea that there could be a romantic relationship. And then as we get with lots of these American shows, they have a range of different writers they're all bringing in all the time, and nobody really picks that up as an opportunity to develop. So it kind of dies off. And once you've gone down the line of them becoming like brother and sister, That's never gonna go any further. that's as much as you'll ever see. was very little before that and nothing afterwards in terms of a relationship between Bonnie and Michael. Ollie: There were a few glances at the start of episode as well when they're in the office in the flag building and she's just glancing over to him as he's questioning why he was never told about this rival car. Luke: I guess as well, we mentioned that about, he does have a wife. Just to fill in what's going on there, his wife. Ollie: You said she was on the show? Luke: So she's in the backstory, Stephanie was his wife when he got shot. She comes into the show in an episode later down the line where he discovers, obviously he's got a completely different face so Stephanie doesn't know who he is. Ollie: I was about to ask, does she recognise him? Luke: He discovers that Stephanie's in trouble and he has to go and rescue the situation and save her. So he does that. That's an episode that, a standalone episode. she says something along the lines of, you seem familiar, but they don't obviously get back together. And then she comes back into it again in, I think it's the penultimate episode of Knight Rider. when they actually end up getting married, she gets shot in the head. Like almost immediately that they get married and dies. Yeah, she's got a metal plate. No, so Ollie: I thought you were going to say she gets shot in the head and then has a metal plate and then a reconstruction. And then he doesn't recognise her anymore. Luke: it's quite tragic really. But another plot twist in real life, David Hasselhoff. married Stephanie, he married Catherine Hickland, who played Stephanie in 1984. Ollie: as a result of the meeting on the show, obviously. Luke: Exactly, yeah. And then he shot her in the head. Ollie: And are they still married? Once he started on Baywatch. Luke: Yeah, he's got Pamela waiting. Ollie: Yeah, I've got all these hotties around me. Luke: They're not married, no. He's had, I believe, three marriages and this was the first, I believe. Ollie: It's not surprising, is it? Luke: What are you saying? You... Ollie: Well, he's a looker. Luke: Is he a looker? I sort of wonder that. I guess he is. I don't think he's got a very conventional good looks. He's kind of quite chubby, isn't he? Who does he look like? He looks a bit like Michael Ollie: Yeah, if you have seen them, I think. Luke: Ball. Ollie: Yeah, he does, yeah. You ever seen the film about last night? I think it is. With Rob Lowe and one of the Belushi brothers. Luke: No. Ollie: At the opening scene, Rob Lowe, who's obviously just beautiful when he was younger, and Belushi's saying to him, do you know what your problem is? You're just too good looking. Like, women don't want to be with you because they feel threatened by you. So maybe Hasselhoff's Luke: Yeah. Ollie: in that sweet spot of, he's not too good looking, but he's just good looking enough. Luke: He certainly carries a lot of confidence, I think. He's sort of almost Ollie: Yeah. Luke: like it's shining out of his skin, his confidence. Ollie: Yeah, add his hair. I liked the... The setup of Kara C antagonist, I thought that was very cool. It was interesting you spoke about how they created Michael to be less intelligent than Kit and that needed to happen. was the same. Well, probably need to give an overview of the actual episode. You happy for me to do that? Luke: Yeah. Yeah, I do. Ollie: So we have this rival car to Kit and it's called. It's been hidden away. Luke: which has been hidden away, hasn't it? It's been in storage. Ollie: It's actually called K.A.R.R. Knight Automated Roving Robot. Actually a predecessor of Kit. And it's funny actually throughout the whole episode, there's this tangle between both cars, both Kit and Car. Which one is better? like, Carr thinks it's better because it was the original, whereas Kit thinks it's better because Carr's a prototype and anything that comes after a prototype is necessarily better than the original. there's Luke: Yeah. Ollie: a kind of technological rivalry between them. Anyway, this is Luke: But they're actually, they're exactly the same, aren't they? They're just, it's like having two PCs that are exactly the same model, but they've just run, they're running different software. Like it's a... Ollie: Yeah, they're just programmed with different objectives, aren't they? And so the construct of the episode is that Carr is locked away for the benefit of humanity. Very funny that it's locked using the kind of padlock you might put on a bail tent at a gramping site. Luke: Thanks. Ollie: This thing that's really dangerous. Luke: Yeah. Ollie: Just jimmied. So we've got these two criminals who sense their opportunity. that's what I was going to say. you were talking about before with Michael being less intelligent than Kit, we've got these two criminals who are absolutely hapless and foolish and they have to be because Karr needs to be the proper antagonist. In normal shows it would be Michael pitted against the criminals but in this show it's Kit versus Karr and so these criminals are drunk, they're lazy, they're greedy but they don't have any hyper criminal intelligence whatsoever they force themselves into the lab where car is stored, release car from its shackles, and then the rest of the episode is an attempt to reshackle car, I suppose. Luke: Carr has been programmed to protect Carr, whereas Kit's been programmed to protect a human or humans, maybe it'd be Michael. So they drive towards each other. don't they? Michaels does actually summon up something very clever. He realizes that if he drives towards Carl, because it has to protect itself, it's going to swerve out of the way. And as a result, swerve across the cliff and it swerves across a cliff. I wonder why it didn't swerve the other way, actually, thinking about it. Ollie: the Luke: Swerves off a cliff and crashes into the sea. Little trivia fact, that scene. Did you, and I'd be interested to find out if you noticed any other little glitchy things like where the stunt men were obvious or whatever. But anyway, that scene was not Carr and it was not from Knight Rider. That scene where the car goes off the cliff and falls into the sea and crashes and explodes was from a 1977 film that was in stock footage. Yeah. Ollie: Wow! Just owned by the production house and they just clipped Luke: Exactly, Ollie: it in. Luke: because they can't keep writing off these Pontiac Transams, so they can't have that happen. they get through a lot of them, a bit like Dukes of Hazzard, which we've talked about in bonus content. they get through a lot of these different cars, but nevertheless, if there's an opportunity not to smash this one into the sea, then they're going to take it. Ollie: That's a brilliant bit of trivia What you mentioned about Michael doing something very clever, know, that end scene, know, the site, the whole reference to Zeno, the Greek philosopher, the irresistible force paradox, what happens when two immovable objects meet each other or whatever. I think so, yeah. Luke: Is that what Zeno is about? I don't know that, I'm not familiar with that. Ollie: Yeah, what happens when a when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. I thought it was really lovely and clever. It's almost the message of the show and probably has to be necessarily to restore the faith in humanity that the human logic supersedes the computer logic. know, Luke: Mm-hmm. Ollie: Kit's really worried about what's going to happen, but actually it's a human intervention of Michael figuring that Carl will... Try to preserve itself above anything else and will never crash into kit in that end scene The world needs that faith in humanity, especially in the historical context of when this was when this was made. Yeah Luke: Do you think that's how we as a species hope we will navigate the sort of challenges of AI in the same way? Ollie: Well, we're recording at a time when the AI... I mean, I find this completely bizarre, but perhaps because it's armily informed, the AI uber master tech bros are asking governments to regulate them. And I'm just thinking, why the fuck don't you regulate yourselves? Why do you need an external force to stop you doing what you're doing? But then you're telling the world that you're really worried about what you're doing is going to end humanity. It seems bizarre. Luke: Mmm. Great, anything else of interest from the episode? Ollie: I love the language actually, the scientific language. Michael takes Kit to the laboratory and Kit senses car's presence. Somehow there's another car like me and Kit says, my telemetry is all over the place. So I looked it up. What is telemetry? Like, have they just made this word up? But it's a thing. Yeah. Luke: Mm. See if it's accurate. Yeah. Ollie: It describes the communication between two remote objects in a similar way to how your watch, when you're running, connects to the GPS satellite. So obviously, Kits Telemetry was all over the place because somehow it's run into another version of itself remotely. So I thought that was great because what it speaks to is how well researched these Luke: Yeah. Ollie: science fiction TV shows are. They're not just figments of people's brains. Luke: And it would have been, it's not the ease of research that we have now where you're just going, I'll just go and Google that from my desk. Like somebody would have had to have gone off down a library or go and speak to somebody who's an ex, a scientist or something, give a science lab a ring to understand it. It must have been so much work. Ollie: Yeah, yeah. an extension of that is, you know, there's no echo chamber back in 1982 where you've got knobs on the internet going, well, actually, I think you'd find that was called telecommunications. You you haven't got to have you. They didn't really have an imperative to be so precise with their language because... Luke: so you've saying that they wouldn't have needed to have worried too much. Yeah, so they could have just like made it up. Featuring Barry Ollie: Yeah, yeah, because who's going to call them out? A letter to points of view or something? You know? It's not going to happen. Luke: Took, who was referenced in the monkeys episode. The goodies actually. Points of view, sorry. just... Ollie: right, right. You might have to explain for our audience what points of view was. I don't know, maybe not. Luke: It was a show where people complained about things that they'd seen on television and wrote into a guy who would read out their letters, sarcastically. Ollie: The BBC, always just impregnable, Luke: So you mentioned there was this 2008 Knight Rider film. Ollie: Yeah, yeah. no, TV series, but it got canned Luke: Yeah. TV series. Ollie: after a few episodes. I didn't do too much research, as you know. Luke: So that was one of four different attempts to relight the fire of Knight Rider over about 20 years. there were, do you reckon, have you heard something? Ollie: Well might be a fifth, there might be a fifth Luke. Just in the Mitch Flicks commission but let's leave that for later. Luke: spoiler alert. So the original series ran for four seasons and did 90 episodes. And it just started to decline in terms of its audience size by that fourth season. It was like every time that they saw the numbers going down, it's like introduce some more technology. It was a bit like a. a Windows laptop that's constantly getting system updates. They were giving Kit more stuff. So, I mean, they gave it something called super pursuit mode, which increased its speed by 40%. It's like, it's easy. You know, like when you do an update on a computer, it tells you all the things you've done and you're just like, yeah, whatever. As long as the main thing works, I'm not interested in these tiny optimizations that you've done, but they were doing that constantly to try and keep it, keep the show alive. They brought in a new human character who is called RC3. to try and introduce another dimension to the story. So they got slightly desperate in that fourth series to try and make it more, the dial up and try and make it more entertaining. And eventually NBC pulled the plug on it. But there were four more attempts, as I say, to sort of get some mileage out of the Knight Rider franchise. You had a couple of TV movies and two of a different series. They had one series. where they had a, rather than just Michael driving the car, they had a team of different drivers that would drive kit. And then obviously we know David Hasselhoff went on to, till this day really, still has had a very good career since his breakthrough really with Knight Rider, Baywatch you mentioned, he did America's Got Talent. Still very much available for hire, I would imagine at the moment. Ollie: Camille. Luke: Cameo, I'm not sure on that. It feels a bit low for David. would have thought, I don't know, maybe the price is right. Ollie: a musical career. It's very popular in Germany, isn't he, in that regard? Luke: I know, I actually didn't look into why he said that. I know that he sang just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So we would normally have the surprise end game here at this stage where it's dead or alive. I hope we both know David Hasselhoff's still going. What about Kit? Is Kit still alive? Ollie: kit will be alive in some sort of museum belonging to the TV production company or Luke: Fantastic. Ollie: in a private collector's collection. Luke: or even closer, you've got it right, Kit is in the Marconi Car Museum, which is a privately owned collection in which state of America. Ollie: I will go with Texas. Luke: California. It was good guess otherwise, the rest of it. Ollie: Let's make way for Max then. This could be just talking for 20 seconds about what chaotic nonsense it is or we could talk for two hours about how groundbreaking, satirical, controversial the show was. But within all of that there'll be some gold. So what are going to like? Luke: it was very interesting revisiting actually. You are gonna like finding out how Larry David and George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame fit into the story. You're gonna like learning about the great digital art fraud that even Max Headroom's creators didn't expect to get away with. And you're going to like the unsolved mystery of who hijacked American TV broadcasts in 1987 impersonating Max. So some quite interesting stuff here. Ollie: That's really far and wide, isn't it? I can't wait for that. Luke: As a child, I was aware that Max Hedrum existed. I knew what he looked like and what he sounded like, but I don't really recall ever turning in to watch or turning on to watch the show. It was on Channel 4 at 6 p.m. on a Saturday that is. and it was 1985 and I would have been interested in music at that time. I was starting to get really quite interested in pop music. I was reading smash hits. I was thinking why wasn't I watching them? Although the music in Max Headroom is a little bit more alternative than I was probably into and what you could say was part of the mainstream. I was thinking why didn't I ever watch this? I had a look at what was on the other side on ITV at the same time. What do think it was? Ollie: game show of some description. Luke: Knight Rider. Ollie: versus... wow that's brilliant. So we are Luke: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Ollie: pitching these against each other for the ability to watch them, aren't we? Which Luke: Yeah. Ollie: one are you going to choose? Luke: What were your memories of Max Headroom? Ollie: I remember the idea that it was a computer generated individual and actually I thought it was going to be more computer generated than what it actually was. I remember avoiding it because I felt quite intimidated by it. I kind of felt quite vulnerable by that kind of subversive. I remember never enjoying references to spit an image either. You know, I think I was quite a straight kid in Luke: I see, so you kind of picked up on the fact it was a little bit alternative and edgy. Ollie: Yeah, yeah, and I didn't want that in my life. Yeah, I wasn't really a rule breaker. so anything that kind of deviated from. Luke: so you, that's interesting. I wonder how you, I'm interested to find out how you came back into this show and how it landed with you. But what about watching the actual episode? What were your top line impressions Ollie: Well, was just like last week, I think with the Monkeys, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it eventually. the start, Luke: eventually in Ollie: yeah, at the start, I felt it was really unhinged. I actually know, I don't really use social media, especially short form social media in any sense. And so I found it too, too chaotic. But then I relaxed Luke: Mm-hmm. Ollie: into it and actually started to enjoy it. Like when I pressed play on the, on the episode that you, you shared with me and saw it, saw it was going to last for 26 minutes. After about three minutes, I was like, how the fuck am I going to get through this? Like, this is too much, Luke: Yeah. Ollie: but, but yeah, maybe after about 10 to 12 minutes relaxed into it. And I was quite disappointed when it came to an end. And actually it was funny. The ending is that jazz. ballad, isn't it, that he sings? And it's a really beautiful way to finish the show, I thought. Luke: Yeah, sort of appreciating it eventually was exactly the same response I had. So for me, it was a bit like reading James Joyce, Ulysses. It's pretty tough going and not very enjoyable, but then afterwards you start to appreciate how unique it was as an art piece of art and what it was doing at the time that sort of appreciation developed and sort of sweetened what I would find quite a bitter experience of actually watching it. It's exactly the same as you. I found it pretty tough to watch for most of it. But yeah, at a fair point, it does get a little bit easier as you settle in get used to his... Because he's got a lot to deal with here in terms of who he is as a character and his personality, isn't he? very... Almost as they wished it to be. pretty in your face and intense. Ollie: Maybe it's a good time to talk about the actual creation of him then where he came from because lots of our listeners may have never even heard of him. So maybe let's give a bit of context. Luke: okay. So story begins 1984 when Channel 4 was a fairly new British TV channel. And you'll remember the MTV was around and was becoming very popular. And Channel 4 was like, okay, we wanna have a music TV show. We don't have quite the same budgets as MTV. But also popular at that time was this concept of the video jockey as well. So channel four go to this guy called Peter Wag and he works at Chrysalis Records. He oversees video production actually, music videos for Chrysalis Records artists. you've got the like, they're Ollie: They're big record company at the time then? Luke: pretty big. Yeah, they've got Ultravox. Spando Ballet, Blondie, Huey Lewis and the News. So he's invited to pitch a concept for a music video show. And for him, it's like a no brainer because he's thinking, well, this is a great chance for me to get loads of the Chrysalis artists onto TV and get that valuable screen time. So within Chrysalis, he goes to this guy called George Stone, who is essentially a marketing copywriter to sort of tell him, we've got to do this pitch, we've got to come up with an idea for a music video show. And they also draft in these kind of freelancers, they're running their own video production agency, but they've used them before for some of their artists, these guys, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. And they're a couple who worked together and they've recently set up their own firm, production company. And they are becoming very known for their digital work at that time, this sort of emerging world of computer generated artworks and productions. They've developed a bit of reputation of doing this in the music space. So this guy, Peter Wagg, his first idea is that they're gonna just link the videos together with some sort of quick cut, cool 1980s style moving graphics. George Stone, because hearing about this, develops the idea then at this point of calling it maximum headroom with the idea that, okay, this sounds like something where the viewer's gonna be really bombarded with visuals. So their heads gonna get all full up of all these like shapes and sounds, et cetera. When they bring in Rocky Morton, he's like, no, I don't think that's gonna work over an extended period of time. You need some sort of visible person to be this connection. in the middle and him and Annabel, they've become very interested in these TV talking heads. go to America. They've been on a trip recently to America and they've watched a lot of TV and they've seen what we don't have in the UK at that time is the presenter talking down the camera. you see them on Fox News, almost telling them what to think. And they realize that this is something that hasn't really existed on UK television. And now if you bring together all of these people as a team, they're naturally quite subversive people. They've got this kind of punk humor about them. And they think it's funny if they evolve this idea of creating a presenter who's the absolute antithesis of what you'd expect to see on a Channel 4 music show, like a cool guy. Instead, they're thinking, wouldn't it be funny if this was like an older Johnny Carson, Terry Wogan type of figure who's like really insincere, self-satisfied. very confident, maybe plays golf. You remember in this particular episode, Max talks a bit about playing golf, assumes that everybody... Exactly. Ollie: much much much to Sting's dis-constonation. Luke: Somebody who assumes that everybody loves him. So they have this amusing idea of tweaking from this. They've now arrived at this idea, okay, it needs to be a person. So they have the amusing idea of tweaking the original name, Maximum Headroom, to a person's name, Max Headroom. Ollie: but interesting that even though they realize that the visuals aren't gonna be enough, so they keep the concept of Max from the headroom by making the character as chaotic as you could possibly make anyone. They still want to kind of pick up the audience's head, don't they? Luke: They do, yeah. I I don't think they could make, we'll get onto it later maybe, but I don't think they could make anything like this anymore. It is really kind of like something out of art school, isn't it? You know when you go to those, you stumble into a gallery or something and walk into some room and there's an installation going on. Ollie: Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. Luke: Just to continue the story. So what happens next? There are two unforeseen things that happen. So remembering that the team, Rocky and Annabelle, they're known in the industry for their computer work, which was in its very nascent phase. When they go to create the vision for Max Hedroon, when they go to execute their idea, they quite quickly realize is actually not technologically possible to do what they're saying, to make a computer generated TV presenter of this kind of sophistication where he's gonna be talking as Max Hadroom does on screen. So they're like, okay, we're gonna need to fake the idea that he's actually a digital creation. So they audition an actor for the role and then they use a variety of visual hacks essentially, combined with prosthetics. to create the illusion that Max Headroom is digital. And then they add all of the sort of glitches and effects around him. They add in post-production. So Max Headroom, I don't know if you knew this, is a real guy with prosthetics on and light shining on him. he doesn't talk like that. That's all done post-production. They assume that nobody's actually gonna fall for the fact and they're gonna think they're gonna realize what's going on. But nevertheless, they still go out and they call this the first computer generated TV presenter because it's a good catch line, isn't it? To get the attention of the media and the public. But everyone actually just assumes that this is true and that he is a computer generated TV presenter. Ollie: That's really funny because there's various points during the episode the mask slips a little bit and you see the more natural face of the actor, don't you? Luke: Yeah, and you're probably wondering who he is, right? Tell me you are. Ollie: Well, I know the timelines aren't right, but he just spoke... No, Luke: What, you've got a feeling that you know who it is? Ollie: I don't, but I'm sure Jim Carrey would have used this character to inspire his role in Ace Ventura Pet Detective. I mean, side by side. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Luke: You'll see that a lot on the internet, people saying Jim Carrey. If you've gone into a YouTube video of Max Hedgerum, in the comments, you're gonna see someone saying, Jim Carrey copied this guy's personality. He took his career. Ollie: He absolutely did, yeah. Luke: So this guy is called Matt Fruer. He's a young Canadian. He's fresh out of drama school at Bristol Old Vic, actually, in the UK. So he's come over to the UK to learn acting. He's had a few minor roles. Now, do you remember as kids we would watch Monty Python's Meaning of Life quite a lot? And there was a kind of prelude film at the start of Meaning of Life, which is called The Crimson Permanent Assurance. It's like a sort of 15-minute film about some old guys who work in insurance company that have a kind of battle with another corporate boardroom. Matt Frewer. plays a corporate yuppie in that film. And this is kind of slightly famous, this scene. In the film, he throws himself out of the window because he gets cornered by all the old insurance guys and he's got nowhere to turn. So he just kills himself. Stephen Berkoff was the first choice for Max Hedriem actually, but he turned down the role and he later said he regretted that he turned it down. But two things that make this guy, Matt Fruer, a really good choice. He's got a very angled facial structure. as Annabelle says at the time, he actually looks quite like a robot. And then secondly, what they become quite interested in, he's got this kind of twitchy, awkward Canadian humor, and he's really quite comfortable ad-libbing during the auditions and doing quite a lot that they haven't asked for. But they're quite intrigued by it All these kind of bits that he's, yeah, all these kind of Ollie: Spontaneous spontaneity. Luke: spontaneous bits that he's doing. So there's that. Ollie: like ideas I've pretends to do. Luke: Yeah. Somebody else did that joke, didn't they? Stuart Lee said that joke. Yeah. Ollie: Yeah, this is all about intertextuality, isn't it? The whole thing. So we may as well embrace it. Luke: Great artists don't steal, well they do steal. Great artists steal. Ollie: Exactly. Yeah, great podcasts. Don't copy. They just steal. Luke: So I mentioned there were two unforeseen events. The other unforeseen event, just to finish this off, is that Channel 4, when they go back and they pitch this idea, they love the idea of the Max Hadron video show, but they insist that there needs to be a backstory so that people understand where this character that's gonna be the video jockey, where he's come from. So they ask Peter Wagg before they make the music video show, make a 60 minute feature film about the origin of Max Headroom. Peter goes to George Stone, the copywriter, and George is very interested in sci-fi anyway. And he writes this sort of cyberpunk Genesis drama that gets filmed and it looks completely different to what we know as the Max Headroom show. I won't get into... Ollie: Have you watched it? Luke: I haven't watched the whole thing. I've watched some bits of it and I won't get into the weeds of the story because we're gonna, we can't go there today. But the same guy, Matt Fruer, plays the role of Max Hedrum in the show, but he also plays this additional role of this central character who's a journalist called Edison Carter. It's a kind of dark dystopian film and it's for discussion another day, but Channel 4 actually shows this film on... broadcast TV before it shows the Max Hedgroom show. Ollie: I'm going to go watch that. That'd be super Luke: Are you? Ollie: interesting. Yeah. Luke: If you're interested in that, you'll be interested in then. Take some swerves this story, where that goes later on. Okay, so what did you make of the actual episode then? You said a little bit about it. Ollie: So yeah, I mean, we talked about the stream of consciousness. I've probably eerily ahead of its time, as you know, and as I've said before, don't consume short form social media, but I know my daughter watches a lot of vines and the way she's described vines to me seems like the show is a load of stitched together vines almost interspersed with those music videos. I think there were only two music videos in the end. The kind of central interesting thing for me was how left-wing alternative the show was, but how lots of the features wouldn't be read as that today. For example, the Luke: Okay. Ollie: two-minute segment where he pretends to be a black pastor, American preacher, not being overtly racist in the same way that Alfgaard that Garnet Luke: Yeah. Ollie: is deemed as racist, certainly today that would be questionable. And the fact that it's come out of a liberal leaning left-wing production house like Channel 4, I know it's made by Carlton TV, but commissioned by Channel 4, really interesting. Luke: Yeah, that will have been one of his ad libs. As I say, he would work in his own material into these shows. I saw Matt Fruer talking, he was on Letterman, David Letterman's show at one point in the late 80s. And his humor is quite, he does tread the line quite a lot. And you can see what he says something at one point where David Letterman almost jolts back in surprise slightly. And then it gets a little bit awkward after that. So interestingly, what happened with the show is it starts off, has this kind of essential role as just linking the videos together and saying a few things in between. they're like, do more of that. they encourage him to do more of this ad libbing and these bits. And also you mentioned there's only two music videos. Really, by the episode that we watch, it's not much of a music video show, is it? Because there's only two videos. It largely is this interview with Sting. And that was Ollie: Hmm. Luke: the first time that he did an interview on screen. but that essentially is him becoming a chat show host rather than a music jockey, a video jockey. Ollie: I was thinking about Sting as well. Like, what was his imperative to be on the show? Obviously 1985, it's his first solo launch since he's been in the police, so he's well known to people from the police. Do you think the imperative is for him to look cool? It's not, it's not, he... He's not doing Max Headroom a favour by being on there. he's using it as a launchpad for his own solo career and being on Max Headroom gives him that alternative status of being in this rock band but now this is me. Luke: Hmm, I think yeah Ollie: Because he seems very unsettled on there, especially the golf through line that goes through it through the whole interview. Luke: Yeah, you can tell he's trying to be interesting in response to, because Max Hedren is a pretty, he's not a traditional interviewer, is he? He's pretty full on and he's pretty, he's almost a personality and a character himself rather than, so Sid Sting's no longer the character really, or he's having to fight to be a character. So you can see he feels slightly under pressure how he will respond to these questions and to be, to go along with it, but also say some funny stuff. I think he probably just went on, Ollie: there's a moment where he has to talk about his lyrics and he tries to be quite serious but Max Head Dreams is not having it I think he just has something about golf again. think he just... Yeah. Yeah. Luke: He's pretty rude, isn't he? He's pretty rude. I presume it was just part of the PR cycle that you just had. If you got offered the opportunity to go on there, you're gonna have to go on, because there was limited media opportunities, wasn't there? So you'd probably have to take everything that was given to you. Ollie: Yeah, I guess, but He could have gone on Wogan and hit that traditional police audience though, couldn't he? Luke: slightly, there is that vibe of I'm trying to cling on to something, still be down with the kids kind of. Ollie: taking that interview, you know, that arguably is part of the genre story of Brass Eye. We spoke about Cunt last week. Not gotcha interviews, but certainly let's mock a celebrity interview. Luke: I know there's no documented evidence that Chris Morris was influenced by Max Hedroon, but I definitely could see some sort of indirect influence on his work, I would say. synthetic presenter, sort of the insincere. I mean, actually Chris Morris had on his early GLR show, a very much like a Max Hadroom character who was trying to be down with the kids called Edison Trendy. Which is weird, isn't it? Because of Edison Carter being the character name in that backstory film that Channel 4 Ollie: Yeah. Luke: did. Ollie: Yeah. Luke: You've got that aggressive editing and graphics that you see in Max Hadrian, but you also saw Chris Morris weaponizing the use of disorientating graphics and visual stutters. then, yeah, and then obviously Ollie: Yeah. Day to day opening for sure. Yeah. Luke: the whole dystopian future thing about us being controlled by a television network obsessed with ratings and surveillance. And Morris is exploring similar themes, isn't he, of media manipulation. Anything else from the show that you thought was interesting? Ollie: the unintended consequences of tech malfunctions. I don't know if you're probably very much aware of the trope on YouTube of YouTubers showing up AI to be doing stupid things. There's one guy, He's a gamer called Husq IRL and he just kind of holds his phone up like this and sets AI. He's got the most advanced version of chat GPT. Luke: yes, I've seen that. Ollie: Yeah. And he just, he's got a whole load of videos, hasn't he? Luke: He's like, I'm drowning in a swamp right now. What shall I do? Is that that guy? Ollie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just showing up AI not to be the human companion that we would like it to be. the glitches always start a new thread of the stream of consciousness, don't they? So the glitches actually take him in a different direction that he was going before. So the tech isn't able to be controlled and it'll just go of its own volition. Luke: Yeah, I guess similar to the Knight Rider story. Tech out of control, we need to stop it. So kind of interesting what happened in the US. So the US was interested in both the feature film that was made and also the Max Headroom video show. So the US takes first of all, the Channel 4 show. but takes this element around celebrity chat rather than the music videos. So Max Hedrum goes over to the US and becomes a chat show host. There's a whole separate series, where Max is interviewing the likes of William Shatner, Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Don King, and Matt Fruer that still plays the role of Max. Now. They brought in Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame and Charlie Rubin who had worked with Larry David on the writing of Seinfeld and they bring them in to work on some of the material for Matt Fruer. I wonder what he was like. He was like, it's okay, I'm fine with my own adlibs. I don't need this. And then ABC in the US also did a remake of that original sci-fi film that Channel 4 put out, but it turned into a drama series. So they went back to that Edison Carter journalist story and Fruer again appeared as both those characters, Edison Carter and Max Hadroom. It had this drama series had Jeffrey Tambor in. We know him from Larry Sanders show, Big Guy, Death of Stalin, he's in the hangover movies. again, interesting on the writing front, George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame was asked to make an Xmas special of that drama series. He wrote an Xmas special, Christmas special, and it never got made. ABC canceled the series before they went into production of Martin's script. Ollie: Wonder how many shows, like how much money is invested in shows that never make it. It's quite an interesting thing to explore, it? With this Knight Rider 2008, you know, it got barely beyond the pilot and yet they must've invested so much into just the tech alone to update the tech, Luke: like you hear so much about scripts that never get made, but somebody got paid a lot of money upfront to have the rights of producing and then they just don't produce it. that ABC series was the last thing really that was significant. But he was hired by Cope. Do remember when Coke brought out a new recipe, a new flavor, they were like, we're gonna improve upon the original recipe of Coke. They brought out something called New Coke. He was the face of New Coke, which was a massive flop. They had to quite quickly withdraw New Coke and abandon it and go back to the original recipe. everyone hated it. I think it was because they were under so much pressure to compete with Pepsi at that time. It cost them $800 million, that whole new Coke experience. Ollie: Wow. Luke: Catch the Wave was Max Headroom's slogan. Ollie: Pepsi must have had so much confidence back then because you remember going to the Midsummerset show and Pepsi would have a stand where you did a blind tasting and they Luke: Yes. Ollie: must be so confident that people would choose Pepsi over Coca-Cola, Luke: Then just the final thing to mention in terms of Max Headroom, because it's almost become a legendary incident In 1987, the TV signal in Chicago was hijacked. by an unknown force and a guy in a Max Headroom mask interrupted, I think what was being shown, there was a sports, there were two interruptions on one evening of TV. First interruption took place during a sports roundup on a news program. So imagine you're just watching, it was American football, some American football clip at the time and then. This guy comes on, there was no audio on the first broadcast, but you just saw this guy in a max headroom mask and kind of vertical lines, sort of background behind him. Lasts a few seconds. Then they managed to hijack again with a little bit more impact. So I think during an episode of Doctor Who later in the evening, the masked figure returns and this time they've got audio on there as well. And they're making all these kind of bizarre statements. nothing necessarily related to Max Hedrum. They bring up a Pepsi can as they catch the wave rather than a Coke can. They hum a cartoon theme tune. And then it ends with the guy in the mask being spanked on his naked bum with Ollie: You Luke: a fly swatter. This is 90 seconds of sort of hijacking that takes place. So see his bum getting spanked with this fly swatter. And then the engineers at the TV station managed to regain control of the airwaves. it's still to this day, never known who that was, why they did it. Nobody's ever admitted to it. And they believe that the hijackers were sat very close to the TV station and they were using microwave technology to... commandeer the airwaves essentially at the station's transmitter. Ollie: Telemetry telemetry Luke: Yes, probably. as usual, end game Dead or Alive is Matt Fruer, Dead or Alive. Ollie: much alive. If Larry David's alive, so is Matt Fure. That's what I'm gonna go with that. Luke: Yeah, he's still relatively young. He's 68. And he lives between Canada and California. And he's still working. He was in something that's coming out later this year called The Hunting Party. But he's done pretty well. he's continued acting for his whole career. Ollie: Jim Carrey stunt double. Luke: Yeah. we're gonna try and build the best. 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