Just came to mind that another piece of personal nostalgia has just arrived on DVD with Max Headroom, the complete series! (ala Shout! Factory) A short-lived originally British-produced narrative-based series that introduced one of the decade's more unique celebrities 25 years before Hollywood finally seems to have perfected image-perfect CG humans. In the dystopian future world of MH, TV is king, and ratings have become an ultimate commodity, a lone reporter on a dangerous story is killed in action, but not before his cerebral data is uploaded onto the networks creating the wisecracking, ultimately bizarre construct known as Max Headroom!
Introducing cult names, Matt Frewer(also in Watchmen & Honey, I Shrunk The Kids), Jeffery Tambor & the ever impression-making Amanda Pays in perhaps one of the decade's most progressive heroes, Theora Jones. More than a Thatcher-era Emma Peel, she was a cool-headed, and altogether fun spin on the so-called straight man character. A super sharp post-Blade Runner satire of TV culture, and the nefarious lengths commercial interests would go in the name of nightly numbers, Max Headroom was the brainchild of music video luminaries, Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel who had a pretty cool cult run in the 80s.(that is...until the ill-fated Super Mario Bros. Movie...eck) Regardless, this series is now available for re-examination in a time where we are more overrun by marketing than ever. Could Twitter be the next evolution of the "Blipvert"?
You be the judge.
Those wondering where you've seen Max before, well I can imagine many of you remember ads like this...
Max also appeared in a classically creepy Art Of Noise video, as well as his own talk show on Cinemax (where I remember him recoiling in horror at the eye-cutting antics of the young Penn & Teller!)
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