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
