tek's rating: ½

Max Headroom, on ABC
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I never got a chance to see this originally, and the few reruns I've seen over the years have been rather scattered, out of order. I don't know if I've seen all of them, but I doubt it. Though there aren't many eps, anyway. It's a strange show and hard to describe. It's set 20 minutes into the future (ostensibly; but clearly it's farther than that- at least, as of the original airing of the series, so that the "future" is by now in our past). Edison Carter (Matt Frewer) is a reporter for Network 23, which seems to be owned, I think, or at least heavily influenced by the ZikZak Corporation, which is kind of evil or anyway... none too reputable. Edison works with a controller, Theora (Amanda Pays). They both work for a guy named Murray (Jeffrey Tambor), who is the news director or producer or something, I forget. Also there's a young computer genius named Bryce, who in the pilot made a copy of Edison's memories and downloaded them into a computer system, from which was created Max Headroom, a digitized version of Edison who no one can control and who is always popping up on TVs pretty much everywhere to tell anyone watching exactly what he thinks about things. He's rather unique, that Max. And just because he has Edison's memories doesn't mean they have the same personality. Not even close, except that they both seem to be against evil, and want to inform the public of such things. Still, Edison usually finds Max rather annoying. And, well, there are a number of other recurring characters I can't think of anything to say about at the moment, seeing as I don't remember the show that well, from what little I've seen....

Anyway, Edison is constantly going after news stories, trying to expose all kinds of corruption and bad stuff and whatnot, even if it's not always in the best interests of his own network. Yes, a very strange, bizarre, odd, weird, strange sort of a show, kind of surreal, kind of postapocalyptic, kind of funny, and nearly impossible to follow or really understand. But still truly great. The concepts, though bizarre, were, yes, great. And the acting was great. I think. But the writing was often kind of stupid, when it was trying to be futuristic and/or funny and/or confusing. But only occasionally. More or less. Anyway....

I should mention there have been a number of shows with or about Max Headroom, of which I've only seen this one. And I don't really know anything about any of the others, the very existence of which kind of confuses me. I think one show was even just a talk show hosted by Max. Plus, I think the first thing I ever saw the character in was a series of Coca-Cola commercials... Very sort of meta....


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