Television networks battle one another in an unrelenting ratings war. Whoever controls the airwaves controls the dystopic world in which they broadcast. So when Network 23s star reporter, Edison Carter, uncovers a deadly secret that could shake up the dominion the station has over its viewers, the only option is to eliminate Carter before he can make his story public. After his “accident,” his mind is uploaded to create the world’s first self-aware, computer-generated TV host: Max Headroom! But will Max bow to his creators? Or will he be the key to his human alter ago bringing down a network superpower?
Able to boast his own international talk show, music videos, countless endorsements and merchandising, the puckish Max Headroom became more than just a character on television. He was a decade-defining icon, never better represented than in this sardonically witty, adventurous look at society and the place of media within it. Now all 14 uncut episodes — starring Matt Frewer (Watchmen), Amanda Pays (The Flash), Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) and Morgan Sheppard (Star Trek) — are finally available together in one long-awaited DVD collection!
Rating: 
(out of 80 reviews)
List Price: $ 49.97
Price: $ 31.00
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November 4, 2010
#1
Review by Richardson
Rating:
They had this at my local DVD Planet a week early so I picked it up…. I enjoyed this show on its first run, and I do like science fiction. To answer many of the speculations…it doesn’t look that great. Most shows in the 70s were shot on FILM but alas the 80′s brought on the video age and these shows that were shot that way suffer greatly when they come out on DVD…which seems to accentuate their soft, poor color saturation and poor contrast…which make most of them barely watchable for me. I had just watched an episode of Mannix (from the late 60′s) on DVD before sticking the Max DVD in and it was like night and day..sadly.
Many have asked if “20 minutes into the future” is included…it is NOT.
the 5th DVD is a bonus disc which contains..
1) an hour making of ….featuring the behind the scenes/camera/creative folks
2) Looking back at the Future…a 35 minute “round table”discussion with a some of the cast members , Tambor, Pays,Tomei, and Chris Young…(NO Frewer)
3)The big Time Blanks…Tomei and Morgan Sheppard chatting for 12minutes
4)the science behind the fiction…one of the creators discussing the science of the show 12 minutes
5)The writers remember….11 minute interview with a couple of the writers
6)Brian Frankish discusses “producing” the show…8 minutes
I usually enjoy watching the behind the scenes on most DVD sets….these were pretty tedious and seemed inflated….of course they could not resist playing with graphics , sound and textures to try and make them appear videoish from the old 34……
but I can’t imagine watching any of these features…ever again.
its curious that the star of the show was absent these 2hours of extras and even more interesting that SHOUT factory says on the back cover “members of the cast” are in the bonus content instead of listing them so that folks would assume that the star would be involved?
None of the coke commercials are included
Not using the art of noise music video
Not included: the telefilm “20 Minutes into the future”
Not included any of the other Max Headroom clips from Muppets to the interview show on Cinemax.
If you are a big fan of the show you have the 14 episodes from “Blipvirts” to “Baby Grobags” most likely as good as they ever looked.. and for those of you crying about the lack of a Blu Ray release…I’d say WHY? this is cheap video….and boy does it look it ….Blu Ray would only make it look cheaper.
All that said…I liked and still do …some of the ideas presented and some of the characters. I do feel that SHOUT has put a pretty high price on essentially a 4 DVD set….and have deducted my stars for the lacking bonus features and for the heavyweight price…not a great value for money in my humble opinion…at $29 its a 5 star set….and the lack of more creative extra features or even the star of the shows participation understood…but at 50 bucks….I expect more.
November 4, 2010
#2
Review by C. Strock
Rating:
“Max Headroom” was originally a character used by Channel 4 in Britain, in 1984. Matt Frewer portayed Headroom, as he did in the ABC television programme in America.
Predicting a 500-channel smorgasboard of channels, reality television and webcams, MH was clearly ahead of its time. Let’s hope we get a DVD soon, complete with clips from the original broadcasts, and even the entire made-for-tv movie by Channel 4.
Incidentally, going by Steve Roberts’s novelisation, MH takes place in the year 2004.
November 4, 2010
#3
Review by John E. Clancy
Rating:
My wife Kathleen & I just watched the Video Tape version for the 1st time in maybe 10-15 years, and we were really surprised at how well it holds up; really much better than I remembered, and I thought it was pretty fantastic back then. I had watched it perhaps half a dozen times in the 1980′s.
The other remarkable thing is – there is so much from The Matrix that was ‘borrowed’ from this production – a controller surrounded by CRT’s in communication with and directing the actions of Edison Carter, telling him when to pass through corridors, monitoring the bad guys (agents) – even fighting someone else for control of the “system”. And then an actual ‘Matrix’ with Bryce’s code figures in the story (only called ‘The Matrix’ by Max during the promo contest announcement at the end of the video.) The world outside Network 23 looks so much like the ‘true world’ Morpheus shows Neo – it is all here.
But Max holds up just fine on his own. Max has Blank Regg, and Edison has Theora. They do not make them like this anymore.
November 4, 2010
#4
Review by A. W. Crawford
Rating:
Given some of the stuff that’s made it onto DVD, I’m amazed that we’ve yet to see “Max Headroom” appear. Heck, the original UK TV movie must be approaching the age where the rights revert to creators – in the UK at least, they didn’t sell their soul to Coke. What I’d like to see most (and what I think is most likely to make an appearance first, probably as a PAL DVD) is the original UK TV movie. It’s basically the same plot as the US pilot but doesn’t pull its punches quite as much, Bryce gets his just desserts, and it’s generally got a grittier, darker feel. Oh, and it also benefits from an excellent soundtrack by Midge Ure and Chris Crosss of Ultravox, which I wouldn’t be surprised to see as an audio-only release of this appear before any DVD, since I’d be pretty sure that the rights belong to Ure/Cross again by now. The fact that Rocky Morton and Annebel Jankel were behind this one contributes at lot – and explains why Max turned up later on an Art of Noise video.
Me, I’d be happy with just the original UK movie and the soundtrack, but it’d be interesting to see the US series released on DVD – most were aired in the UK much later and while there’s a large cast overlap, they just weren’t the same.
The third thing that’d complete the set is, alas, unlikely ever to see DVD. That’s Max’s UK TV series, also aired on Channel 4, which was shown in the UK before the US series and after the original movie. It didn’t run for very long, and was only 30 minutes or so, run at something like 11pm on Channel 4, which pretty much doomed it to falure, but it was an interesting mix of “Interviews” (i.e. Max briefly tolerating the presence of celebrity guests, who he proceeded to interrupt and talk over, These alternated with an interesting and often eclectic mix of music videos – stuff like Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Zoolook” video. If anyone’s got a list of all the videos shown on this show, I’d love to see it.
However, the likelihood of this ever appearing is near nil, just because of the rights issues involved with all of the music videos.
So, a DVD release of the original UK movie and a box featuring the US series would do very nicely. I’d accept both in the same set, but would be very disappointed to see the UK original tacked on as a “bonus”. The US series had already been toned down for the US audience (by making Bryce one of the good guys – I can just see the network exec saying “Can’t we make this characer more sympathetic to increase popularity with the teenage demographic?).
Oh, and the original deserves a good quality digital remaster – I hope it was originally recorded on film rather than tape – since while the Max graphics themselves show their age, the rest of the “computer graphics” have withstood the test of time for the same reason that the computer graphics on the BBC “Hitchhikers” series did. The reason? Like the HHGTTG graphics, they’re not computer graphics, they’re all conventional animation courtesy of Peter Lord.
November 4, 2010
#5
Review by valentine03
Rating:
…and I don’t mean Amazon! This is for you, TV Powers-That-Be.
When Max Headroom came out we watched it devotedly, because we knew good and well that you’d get rid of it as soon as you figured out which switches to throw.
Here it is over 20 years later, and you still haven’t figured out that there is MONEY TO BE MADE off this thorn that is still in your sides. People want to buy this show. They WILL buy this show. You can have a tidy little income coming in continuously off it, and you can laugh yourselves sick because when it comes in, most of us will be watching it on–you guessed it–television.
So load it up with commercials (not Blipverts, please!) or do whatever else you have to do, and get it on the market. We’re w-w-w-w-w-aiting!