Max Headroom – The Complete Series (1987/Shout! Factory DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Episodes: C+

 

 

Trying to combine the New Wave music look (in and out of Music Videos) with DEVO and Blade Runner, Matt Frewer plays a popular media reporter whose mind is downloaded into cyberspace by the corporation that is slowly betraying him.  This results in an alter ego arising in cyber space and the result is a TV twin named Max Headroom.  This 1987 TV series was produced by Warner Bros. and picked up by ABC, but despite all the hype, it was not the big hit they had hoped for.  Shout! Factory is now issuing The Complete Series on DVD for the first time.

 

Getting as far as 14 hour-long episodes, it has been somewhat influential, from the career of Jim Carrey to the early and also-influential success of the animated Freakazoid, also from Warner, the show is an interesting time capsule of the pop culture at the time.  New Wave was on the way out by the time the show hit the air, no one could quite figure out what the show was about, it was very uneven in what it was trying to do, could have used some more character development and tried to have it both ways: be corporate friendly while being about a future with an evil corporation.

 

Network 23 is too big for its own good and Carter discovers a secret that could bring it down, which is why he is grabbed and downloaded, but this backfires somewhat.  In addition, he has friends at the broadcast office and wants to fight back.  Add that to how different the style was and you can see why that narrowed any commercial success.  Critically, it was always a mixed bag, yet there are some ideas that work and some of its look definitely influenced Mystery Science Theater 3000.

 

At least it was ambitious, but I will say it did not age quite as badly as expected.  Now you can see for yourself.  William Morgan Sheppard, Concetta Tomei, Amanda Pays, Chris Young, George Coe and the great Jeffrey Tambor (who steals more than a few scenes) also star.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is a mix of some film and NTSC analog video, looking about as good as a combination from that time could, though there are still aliasing errors and other tape flaw issues, color can often be good.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is limited, but not flat and not bad, though it can also be a tad hot and have location audio flaws from the dramatized location shoot, so some flaws are more or less intended.  Extras include and three Making Of featurettes: Live At Network 23: The Story Of max Headroom, Looking Back At The Future and The Big-Time Blanks.  They all have interviews and the second is a round table discussion on the show, all of which (along with the fun lenticular sliding paperboard shell on the DVD case) will make fans happy.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo