1 9 9 7 – 2 0 0 2 (Canada/Germany)
61 x 90/45 minute episodes
The tyrants who rule the Light Universe pass their essence onto their successor upon their demise, while their still-conscious brains are kept in a vault. Their chief resource is the Lexx (voiced by Tom Gallant), a giant, biological insect spacecraft and the most powerful mobile weapon in the universe.
Kai (Michael McManus) is the last of the Brunen-G race. He has been kept in a state of amnesiac suspended animation for over 2,000 years, to be revived by proto-blood for short periods and used as an assassin.
Cowardly anti-hero Stanley H. Tweedle (Brian Downey) is an ignored non-entity security guard (class four) who misses an appointment and is branded a criminal.
In the dungeons, overweight Zev (Eva Habermann in the early episodes and then Xenia Seeberg) has been convicted of not fulfilling her wifely duties and is being transformed into a gorgeous, svelt love slave.
Meanwhile, captured terrorist Thodin (Barry Bostwick), who is due for public execution, escapes with his gang’s help, and causes chaos, setting into motion Tweedle’s accidental theft of the Lexx, Zev’s escape with her new busty love slave body (and the characteristics of a giant reptilian cluster lizard), and Kai’s release to combat the terrorists before his memory returns.
Stan, Zev (later Xev,) Kai, a lovesick disembodied robot head called 790 (voiced by Mike Petersen at first, and eventually by Jeffrey Hirschfield), and the stolen tyrants’ brains head off in the Lexx to vaporise tyrant planets and find a place for themselves in the Dark Universe (while searching for a supply of proto-blood before Kai expires).
The adult Sci-Fi series – a Canadian/German co-production – blended deadpan humour, dark themes, playful (albeit often gratuitous sexuality), a healthy dose of cynicism, and some surprisingly challenging themes of morality, all wrapped up with a childish grasp of fantasy and some of the coolest steampunk contraptions you’ve seen since The Time Machine (1960).
Guest stars included Malcolm McDowell, Tim Curry, Britt Ekland, Rutger Hauer, Lionel Jeffries, Jimmy Somerville (from Bronski Beat and The Communards), and Red Dwarf alumni Craig Charles and Hattie Hayridge.
Zev/Xev Bellringer
Eva Habermann (1)
Xenia Seeberg (2)
Stanley H Tweedle
Brian Downey
Kai
Michael McManus
790
Mike Petersen (1)
Jeffrey Hirschfield (2)
Voice of the Lexx
Tom Gallant