Actor From Another Planet -- Matt Frewer May Get His Signals From Outer Space

LOS ANGELES - Something has got a hold of Matt Frewer. He does not appear to be himself today. But then, he hardly ever does.

Recall one early-season episode of ``Doctor, Doctor,'' the CBS sitcom in which Frewer plays one of the partners in a small Providence, R.I., medical practice: He shook his hips like Elvis; he bayed like a wolf while extracting sea urchin spines from a patient's nekked posterior (full moon, he explained); he impersonated a screaming lobster, snorted like a horse, and slipped into a Charles Laughton ``Mutiny on the Bounty'' impression.

To watch Frewer act is to watch cable TV while your 8-year-old nephew fidgets with the remote control. Frewer switches personnae more often than a surgeon changes gloves, faster than The Flash slips on his red rubber suit. He seems to be receiving his orders from an alien mother ship moored somewhere in deep space.

Now, during an afternoon rehearsal, the ghost of Walter Brennan has taken over his larnyx. Consoling a fellow doctor who fears he's entering decrepitude, Frewer sails from age 32 to geezerhood and back in a split second. The show's writers observe off set, laughing as if they have been snorting nitrous oxide.

``Those qualities are gifts, to be able to riff like that,'' says the show's creator/executive producer, Norman Steinberg, who compares Frewer's improvisational knack to that of comedian Robin Williams. ``They're mutants, these people. They're not like us.''

Frewer seems terrestrial enough, sitting in his dressing room during a break for lunch, wearing jeans, high-top sneakers and a black T-shirt silk-screened with skeletal illustrations that appear to be borrowed from an anatomy textbook. He plows through a pastrami on rye. He opens his lantern jaw and bites into a dill pickle.

Suddenly, Matt's not here anymore. A Frenchman has sublet his body.

``I'd go eento audizions az deefferent charactairs. Mozstly az zees French guy, Claude Pissoir,'' says Frewer, recalling the days immediately after graduating from drama school in England. ``Hee sort of talked like Jacques Cousteau and wore undairshirts wiz gravy stains on zem.''

Frewer carried publicity photos of Claude. Letters of reference from a fictitious Parisian agent. A phony resume.

Frewer laughs his own springy laugh, which uncoils like a piece of twisted surgical tubing. Matt's back.

``It had stuff on there like the baker's assistant in `Cyrano de Bergerac.' And I was in a musical in Marseilles called `Dancing on the Docks.' It seemed like a good idea at the time.''

The son of a Canadian Navy officer and a nurse, Frewer had moved to England to attend Bristol's Old Vic acting school. There, he came close to being booted out for irreverence that could veer into insolence.

``Ralph Richardson said'' - Frewer catches himself on the brink of pretension, snaps into a Richardson-esque, House of Lords accent, then back to himself again - ``you reserve the right to fail as an actor. You should go out on a limb. That was a good environment to do that. A lot of actors go West young man to L.A. and this is it. It's sink or swim.''

After bit parts in movies and BBC television productions, Frewer stopped treading water. He landed a job as host of a talk show on England's risk-taking Channel 4.

Did they want him to act natural? Not exactly. Shoehorned into a Fiberglas suit and vinyl hair, transmitted onto a video monitor propped on the host's desk, Frewer became Max Headroom, TV's first ``computer-generated'' video host. Frewer said he based the cloyingly sarcastic character on a hybrid of Johnny Carson and Ted Baxter.

He also improvised freely. In one inspired moment, he asked Vidal Sassoon his opinion of underarm hair.

The ``Max Headroom'' talk show, also seen in the U.S. on Cinemax, mutated into a short-lived but memorable ABC series with Max as a wise-cracking investigative TV reporter trapped in a computer.

Max got his 15 minutes of fame, and stole Frewer's, too. Max, not Matt, appeared on the cover of Newsweek and pitched Coca-Cola. Kids on playgrounds began imitating Max's transistorized stutter, but probably wouldn't have recognized Frewer even if he popped up on the screen of their Apple II.

When Frewer made his first appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, it was as Max. Dave seemed a bit peeved at having to interview a TV monitor. After some off-the-wall repartee, Letterman asked: Do you have a plate in your head that's picking up some sort of signals from outer space?

A plate? A-a-a-actually, Max

said, it's a whole place setting.

Max had his admirers. ``Max Headroom'' looked, sounded and felt different than anything else on the air. Maybe that's why ABC killed it.

After a few relatively small TV and movie roles - the biggest was Rick Moranis' neighbor in ``Honey, I Shrunk the Kids'' - Frewer took the ``Doctor, Doctor'' role. Largely, he decided to shackle himself to episodic TV again because Steinberg promised him a long chain.

``I knew from seeing `Max' that the improvisational nature was there,'' says Steinberg, whose credits include co-writer, with Mel Brooks, on ``Blazing Saddles.''

``I wanted to have someone who could be flexible. We allow him to roam the pasture.''

Steinberg praises CBS for moving the show to its new, later time period - 9:30 p.m. Thursdays, as of last week - where it may finally find the audience it deserves.

(Tonight, Channel 7 bumps the show to - ack - 12:35 a.m. to make room for a special KIRO ``Volunteer-a-thon.'')

``Doctor, Doctor,'' which made its debut in June 1989, could be CBS' funniest show. It is certainly the hippest. That's a valuable quality on a network that appeals mostly to older viewers, people who might define ``hip'' as the first thing that breaks when you fall.

``What we're trying to do is cross over into the more commercial mainstream but still remain the wild-card show,'' says Frewer. ``Of course the danger that goes along with that is it can become this kinda cult thing. It's always the sort of show I seem to do.''

He mock-etches a cross in his forehead with his thumb and grins sheepishly.

``Cult leader Matt Frewer.''