Tweet
Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: 8/10/2010
Director: Various
Cast: Matt Frewer, Jeffrey Tambor, Amanda Pays
Year: 1987
Purchase From Amazon
The Series:
Those of us old enough to remember the eighties in all their pastel colored glory will remember that Max Headroom was everywhere, but only for about five minutes. All of a sudden this 'computer created' being was pimping Coca-Cola products, starring in music videos, and headlining his own prime time network television show. The character actually debuted on British television but was soon put into production as a regular series which aired for thirteen episodes on ABC between 1987 and 1988. A fourteenth episode was made but never aired, though it is included in this collection.
The concept was refreshingly intelligent for the time - which probably explains why it didn't catch on with the mainstream audience. Set in the future, it followed a TV news reported named Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) who works for just one of the many television networks which more or less keep the country in check and function almost as a government in and of itself. In short, the networks have all the power. At any rate, Edison's thing is exposing network corruption and wrong doing whenever and wherever he can, much to the dismay of his employers. Helping him along are another network employee named Theora Jones (Amanda Pays,) a hacker named Bryce Lynch (Chris Young) and a producer named Murray (Jeffrey Tambor long before Arrested Development).
When Edison is out on an investigation and things go wrong, he has to get out of there fast and gets injured in a motorcycle accident. Worried that Edison is going to die, Bryce basically downloads Edison's mind into a computer and 'Max Headroom' is born, a computerized version of Edison that operates off of the data, some of which is a bit fuzzy, that came out of Edison's mind. As Edison recovers, Max makes his way into the networks computer system where he can see people who are watching him and broadcast himself over specific sets as he chooses. The only way that the network can get Max out of their system is to shut down the entire network, which they flat out refuse to do, so to appease him and in an attempt to keep him under wraps, they give him his own show.
That's the basic premise - every episode lets Edison find a story at which point we see him go out and investigate. Of course, he winds up getting into hot water and more often than not, Max will help him to find a way out of whatever predicament the writers want to throw at him.
The complete collection of episodes that make up this release are presented as follows:
DISC ONE: Blipverts / Rakers/ Body Banks / Security Systems
DISC TWO: War / The Blanks / Academy
DISC THREE: Deities / Grossberg's Return / Dream Thieves / Whackets
DISC FOUR: Neurostim / Lessons / Baby Grobags
For a series more than two decades old, Max Headroom remains a refreshingly interesting series. Not only does it point some very suspecting fingers at mass media outlets and predict the sort of biased reporting that we're now subject to thanks to the various cable news outlets that now serve as supposed journalism, but perhaps more frighteningly so it predicts how powerful these outlets would become. The networks in this dystopic future hold almost all of the power, which is interesting when you think about how news networks on TV and the internet are now able to spin things in such a way as to attempt to control the minds of their viewership. It almost makes you wish there was a Max Headroom who could get in there and mess things up a bit.
The series was made on a fairly low budget and there are times where this is painfully clear in the set s and costumes but that's not what's important about the show. Rather, it's the storytelling and the almost anarchistic themes that periodically run through it. Obviously the graphical portion of the show is horribly dated - computers have come a long way since 1987 - but there's still a lot of smart and clever entertainment value to be had from this series.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Each episode of Max Headroom is presented in its original 1.33.1 fullframe aspect ratio, just as they were originally broadcast on TV. The image quality isn't exceptional but it's not bad. There are times where skin tones look off and the image is fairly soft but for an older TV show, it looks okay.
The sole audio option on this set is an English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track with optional subtitles offered in English only. For as show over twenty years old, the series sounds fine here. There aren't any problems with the mix and dialogue is easy to follow. It's not a fancy mix, but it works.
The first four discs in the set contain only the various episodes along with some menus and episode selection options, but the fifth disc in this collection does house some pretty interesting supplements starting with an hour long retrospective featurette entitled Live on Network 23: The Story of Max Headroom which contains interviews with the producers and writers of the series. It's a pretty interesting look back that gives us the nuts and bolts of how the character wound up on TV and sheds some light on his origins.
Amanda Pays, Jeffrey Tambor, Concetta Tomei and Chris Young and moderator Javier Grillo-Marxuach all appear in a roundtable discussion entitled Looking Back At The Future. At just over a half an hour in length, it's a good talk that lets us in on the series from the actors' point of view. It would have been nice to see Matt Frewer here, given the importance of his work on the show, but for whatever reason that didn't happen. Regardless, what's here is good and there are some interesting stories shared in this segment.
A quartet of shorter featurettes - The Science Behind The Fiction, Behind The Blanks, Producing Dystopia and The Writers Remember - let various crew members and writers share their memories of working on the series and include some welcome input from George Stone, Max's co-creator. All in all, a good selection of extras, though it would have been nice to see the original British movie included here and maybe some of Max's other appearances.
The Final Word:
A show that was eerily ahead of its time gets a long overdue deluxe edition release from Shout! Factory who continue to impress with an eclectic line of unique releases.