Max Headroom: The Complete Series

A complete collection set of 4 discs in one box with all episodes from both seasons. Episodes turn up sometimes online to stream, but it's great to have the series available to revisit if you are a fan. Catch the Wave while you can!Along with Blade Runner and Tron, and many other cutting edge sci fi shows and films that came after, Max Headroom was unique and helped launch a new fiction genre. Max started as a futuristic spokesman for Coca Cola's ultimately failed New Coke formula in a series of weird ads showing the apparently cgi character (he wasn't, not fully anyway) talking to people who encountered him through their TVs. Max could see and hear you, and was a sentient AI, at least in the fictional universe the show was set in.Most knew it was actor Matt Frewer in heavy makeup with special effects added, but the idea of a sentient computer generated TV personality, who had the ability to travel wherever he liked on a whim through cyberspace, or the airwaves, and reside in any computer or TV monitor, and talk to people through them, was a fairly new and compelling trope at the time, and a fun fantasy to get caught up in.Max got his name from British warning signs for vehicular height clearence that read, "max. head room 3 meters" or whichever height. Those have since been replaced, but were common at the time.BBC channel 4 made a 1 hour special that was a sci fi drama, "Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future" that gave the backstory and premise to the character. He went on to host a number of music video and comedy talk shows on cable, like Max Headroom's Christmas Turkey, or the Max Headroom Talking Head Show.In fall 1986, and spring 1987, the ABC network ran the Max Headroom series. The story drew upon dystopian novels like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World, and movies like Blade Runner or Road Warrior for inspiration.In this sometimes fun, but often bleak and sinister world, Television is supreme. Such that politicians are employees of TV networks, and elections are decided by real time online polls from viewers. The homeless may not always have food, but they are provided free TVs- the catch is that the TVs have surveillance cameras built in, and it's illegal to turn them off. Cash is all but gone as a currency in favor of automated credit payments, as we see today, but this was uncommon in the 1980s. In this world the cities are dying, with run down slums surrounding the office towers and high rise apartments. It resembles a devastated war zone where no ordinary homes and neighborhoods seem to exist. Many don't own cars, and if they do, there aren't many nice places to drive them to. The slums are populated by Blanks, those who hired hackers to erase their identities from government databases. They do so for personal freedom and refuse to participate in mainstream society as a form of protest and lifestyle choice. They squat in improvised shelters and abandoned structures. There are open air markets with stalls and street vendors. Blanks survive by bartering goods and services, scrounging, or doing what they have to. Add to this the corrupt body bank system meant for body internment or organ donation, that often deals in black market human parts.The main protagonist is Edison Carter, a journalist for Network 23. As an investigative reporter, he does stories on corruption and helps who he can, but not always successfully. He uncovers plots by Zik Zak corp. which sells cheeseburgers. They and other companies are part of a scheme to use TV and other forms of technology as mind control to keep consumers glued to their screens, and to buy more- sometimes with deadly results.When Carter discovers that Network 23 and Zik Zak's use of Blip Verts, a form of accelerated subliminal advertising, can kill couch potatoes, the network tries to silence him. He is knocked out by a max head room sign while trying to escape thugs on a motorcycle. He is taken to a lab, and a construct of his mind is downloaded into a computer, at the orders of ruthless network execs who want to find out what Edison Carter knows. The resulting digital personality construct glitches, and names itself Max Headroom, after the last thing Edison saw before losing consciousness. He almost dies and is later rescued from a body bank, from there he exposes the story of Blip Verts with he help of memories recovered from Max Headroom.Each episode brings similar cyberpunk adventures where we see the increasing influence of corporate greed, computers, and other new technologies, mass media, an authoritarian mindset, and the prospect of emerging AI, on our lives and society. The story is never resolved because the show was cancelled after one year. Like other early cyberpunk franchises, The story was a bit weird and ahead of its time to enjoy initial mainstream success, but achieved a cult following in later years. It is rumored that the Max Headroom sci fi series will be rebooted soon on AMC with new and returning actors... 20 minutes into the future? It would be nice to see the further adventures of Max, so let's hope the rumors are true! Meanwhile enjoy the dvds!

It's ironic, but Max Headroom is so... retro!Don't get me wrong, I loved this series. It was even better than I remembered it. The media commentary and social satire are more relevant today than they were in 1987. And the science fiction elements are still as I recall them, somewhere at the intersection of William Gibson and Larry Niven. But funnier. And back in 1987, I found Max himself to be annoying, because of overdose: New Coke commercials, his own talk show, and more. But today, with a fresh eye, I really liked Max as a program trying to understand what it means to be sentient and how to find its place in the world. Really, really good!And the stories had real depth and maturity. I recall when the show was struggling, there was an article that said the scripts were too idea-packed for network TV. They said a typical one-hour TV script was about 60 pages, but a one-hour Max Headroom script was 72 pages. Some of that, I'm sure, was scene description for this fantastic world; but some of it was deep characterization and story development. These scripts would've fit better into the Joss Whedon/J. Michael Straczynski era of complex, evolving characters and extended storylines. And Edison Carter, the putative hero, was nicely flawed and believable. One episode really struck me. Edison's boss, Murray, chewed him out for going over the line. In a typical 80s script, that would be the midpoint of the episode: the hero would come back from his mistake, win his boss's accolades, and probably even prove he was right all along. Nope, not Max Headroom. Wham! That was the end of the episode. Edison screwed up. He knows he screwed up. And Murray, the stereotypical unreasonable boss that the hero has to work around, was dead right. That didn't feel like an 80's story at all.But in a lot of ways, the technology is so retro. Yeah, they have real time security camera hacking that's still futuristic; and Max himself is still beyond our technology. But the rest? Nobody has cell phones. Everybody has a TV, and often carries them around; but these "portable" TVs are bigger than a shoe box, far bigger than today's smart phones. Many of the computers have typewriter-style keyboards, even manual typewriter keyboards (I think these were an intentionally retro choice by the set designers). And the computer technology itself? At one point, Bryce says (paraphrased), "Only someone as powerful as Network 23 has that much computing power. You'd need BILLIONS of bytes!" Many of you reading this review are using a machine with billions of bytes.The extras are kind of long and talky. You really have to like TV production to sit through them. Either that, or you just can't get enough Max. In my case, both were true, so I did watch them all. I learned a bit about 80's special effects; and the stories of how they fooled the network censors were were pretty funny. Those come late in the first extra, so you'll have to sit through a bit for them.I'll watch this again, many times.

I just wish more episodes had been made.

A cult TV show that, unfortunately, never really hit it's stride when it was new. Now 34 years later the issues raised in the show are all mostly present and accounted for from manipulation of elections, media 'running' our lives, the constant need to be gazing at a screen, surveillance systems, the rich leaving the poor in the dust with a small middle class doing most of the work, militarized police, and the ability to 'create' virtual reality on screen. Yes first introduced in George Orwell's year and still relevant now and still 20 minutes in the future. Don't think it is all mind numbingly dry and heavy - Max is hilarious and there are other characters to lighten the mood but you will be left considering if we are travelling the right road.

Llevaba años detrás de esta serie. Una de las que me más me marcaron en la infancia. Aunque esté en sistema americano (Region 1) y en inglés, ya me las apañaré para poder verla y recordarla. Y si alguna vez sale en Región 2 y en español, seguro que la volveré a comprar.

loved that I have whole set and fast delivery.

はるか昔…もう30年近く前？にNHKでふと観たこのシリーズにドはまりしました。レンタルビデオを借り何度も何度も観た記憶もあります。つい最近またMaxのことを思い出し、どーしても観たい！と思って動画投稿サイトを漁りました。TVドラマシリーズ数本はアップされているものの、細切れだったり画質がイマイチだったり…。で、Amazon検索してこの商品を見つけたものの、リージョンコードがっ！でもMaxに会いたい一心で、リージョンフリーのDVDプレーヤーまで買っちゃいましたよ！DVDとプレーヤーが本日ほぼ同時に到着し、ようやくMaxやEdisonたちと再会できました！もう懐かしさで泣きそうなくらいです。確かに劇中で使われているハードウェアはアナログチックで古さを感じますが、ストーリーは今観ても十分面白い！これからじっくり全シリーズ鑑賞します。字幕もないので、聴き取り頑張らねばー！日本語字幕付きはVHSのみまだ販売はあるようですが、できればDVDで字幕付きを販売していただけると嬉しいですね…。