Customer Reviews

Max Headroom: The Complete Series

5 star:		(65)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

"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.

I received my set yesterday and watched the first two episodes along with all the bonus features.

I think people are being a little too harsh on the image quality. Part of what I remembered about this series is the soft, but gritty look. The soft grittiness contrasts well with the video segments that are super-imposed into the show and gives it a very distinct style. In fact, the video portions look very sharp. If the overall image was any sharper, you would be able to detect the imperfections in the sets and the costumes...along with the shots of Network 23 in the cityscape that is obviously a model.

The image is definitely an improvement over the VHS rips that have been on the internet. Also, the versions that people captured from TechTV are edited for time...so at least these DVDs are the full versions that originally aired on ABC.

The extras are pretty good...except for a few holes. It's interesting that they talk about the making of the original UK mini-movie, yet it isn't included in the set...that seems disappointing (I still have the original on VHS that I bought in the late 80s). Also as many people have stated, Matt Frewer is absent...but from the vibe I was getting in the round table with the actors, he seems like he ended up bitter about the entire Max Headroom persona. There are no segments from the Max Headroom video show and none of the New Coke commercials. So anyone looking for a super complete Max Headroom retrospective are going to be disappointed.

The segment on the making of the show features interviews with the people who invented Max Headroom along with the writers and the producers of both the original UK movie as well as the US TV Show (they actually brought most of the creative talent to the US to help). It's interesting that the went to such great lengths to create a back story for a character that wasn't going to do much more than introduce music videos.

The round table interview is OK. Amanda Pays sounds like she just drank a few Red Bulls before they started shooting...and Chris Young doesn't really say too much, but is pleasant enough and it's always nice to see a child actor who actually turned out ok. I think Concetta Tomei (Blank Dominique) and Jeffery Tambor (Murray) offer the most insight about working on the show. Both seem genuinely sad when they talk about the last day when the show was canceled.

The rest are just segments that seemed removed from the first two features that focus on specific topics. I did love the little talk between Concetta Tomei and Morgan Sheppard as you can see a genuine friendship that blossomed on the set of Max Headroom and continues on to this day.

In the end, it's really about the original TV show. Max Headroom has aged extremely well. Sure, we still get a few punks who look like Pat Benetar fans that escaped from Flash Dance with their cut-off t-shirts. It also has a bit of the early MTV/Cyberpunk look (notice the live statues in the bar in episode 2) but the good news is, it really doesn't scream 80s and feels timeless. This show would have been just as acceptable if it was created this year.

Highly recommended.

...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!

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.

It's hard to say what was best about Max Headroom -- it's dead-bang accurate, Postman-esque assessment of the media industry -- its prophetic extrapolation of 21st century realities -- or its hilarious dry-ball humor. Memorable quote from the show -- Edison yells at Murray, "Since when has the news been entertainment?" Murray, puzzled, pauses and replies, "Since the beginning?"

Max had it all, and America was not ready for this in 1987. But in this age of media elections, televised terrorism, and cyber-privacy invasions, Max is more relevant than ever. The studio needs to quit stalling already and release the entire short-lived series on DVD, not just the pilot ep. "20 minutes into the future" is NOW and Max's fans are STILL WAITING!!!

While I'd love to see this on DVD, I'm not holding my breath.

If Max Headroom proved anything, its that Television doesn't like mirrors. This show lampooned the Television industry, taking all of its flaws and peccadilloes and writing them large across America. Max' version of television in the 21st century hit way too close to the mark. The last thing the TV industry wants is viewers to start *thinking*, particularly about itself.

Does everyone remember David Lynch's "Twin Peaks?" I thought so. Now, who remembers the series "On the Air", by Lynch and his partner Mark Frost, set in a 1950's era live television studio? I'm not surprised - it was cancelled after 2 episodes, which were scathing send ups of the TV business.

TV has no sense of humor regarding itself.

According to [...] "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future" should be coming out on DVD this summer (2010). About time!
This series was one of the most cutting, cynical, brilliant and prophetic SF series to be made -- and surprisingly a lot of people don't seem to be even aware of it.
Unlike the couple of "interview" shows or the coca-cola commercials with Max, "MH: 20 Minutes into the Future" actually had a plot.
Matt Frewer played Edison Carter, a reporter for Network 23, an investigative reporter with a conscious (what a thought!). While reporting on the Blipverts scandal (blipverts being ads that can kill the consumers watching them) he's in an arranged "accident" that nearly kills him. His last conscious thought is reading a warning sign that says, "Max Headroom .. inches". The computer-generated Max is a compilation of Edison's thoughts and memories.
Edison, however, survives the crash... and breaks the story. Amanda Pays is his "controller", who stays at Network 23, feeding him information from traffic cams, etc. Jeffery Tambor is their boss -- on the edge between trying to get actual *news* on the air, and pleasing his ratings-seeking bosses. Sound familiar?
George Coe runs Network 23.
Max Headroom dealt with all sorts of issues -- the clash between security and freedom; auto-payment systems; all-prevalent computers; all prevalent television; ratings; televised violence; etc.
And the entire cast was BRILLIANT!
And the writing was also BRILLIANT - in a snarky sort of way.
Here's a few examples:
"We are the unlucky generation, we are the children who have to play in the poisonous back yard our parents decided not to tell us about." Edison Carter (o.s.- as part of his "I Want to Know" show)
"In today's world your inalienable rights are: consumer credit, unlimited television, and personal security. In your home, in your place of work--you can count on Security Systems. Security Systems wherever you go, there we are." --Security Systems commercial on Network 23
"Security Systems is the largest and most powerful corporation of its kind in the world, it has access to more privileged information than any single government, and in the wrong hands it could be used to destroy businesses and lives."- Edison
And that's just from a couple of episodes. The entire SCRIPTS were bright, funny, intelligent, witty, AND made you think. Hum... when's the last time TV did that? On THIS side of the pond, I mean.
Seriously, the DVD really needs to be out.

Max Headroom was a TV show so far ahead of its time it was scary. I loved that bizarre-but-prescient show and couldn't wait for it to be released on DVD.

Twenty years after the show first aired, my wait is over.

I'm watching the Max Headroom DVDs as I type this. (Our local Barnes & Noble put them sale this week, ahead of street date.)

I have good news and bad news.

The good news: I'm watching Max Headroom on DVD. That, alone, deserves a hearty hip-hip-hooray! I can finally throw away the VHS tapes of the show I recorded from TV some 10-12 years ago. Those tapes have been through a flood, boxed in an outdoor storage unit during winter's frigid temps and summer's scorching heat, and endured so many playbacks that the images became thin as ghosts.

The bad news: the picture on these DVDs is VHS quality. The colors are muddy. The color is grainy and seems overexposed to the point of harshness.

The sound is fine, thankfully. But the images look just like they did on my VHS tapes, or when they were first broadcast on network TV.

Granted, I'm viewing these episodes on a 42" Philips flat-screen TV with 50,000:1 dynamic contrast. It's the sharpest picture possible. But other TV shows I own (Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Hawaii Five-O, Miami Vice, The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, etc.) look great on my TV.

The difference is those shows were remastered. It's obvious Max Headroom was not.

That bugs me. A lot. For a show this groundbreaking, this important, you'd think the people who own the rights to it would have spent a little money to clean them up. If any show deserves to be remastered, it's Max Headroom.

Alas, that's not the case.

Another problem: The cuts from what used to be commercials is sometimes sudden. The screen doesn't go black and then come up on the next scene, smoothly and tastefully removing what would have been a commercial. A time or two, the cut was noticeably sudden.

Another problem: The round-table discussion (on the special-features disc) with the cast doesn't include Matt Frewer, the star of the show. The round-table discussion is somewhat inane, even though it's cool to see the actors again. They said they hadn't been in the same room with each other for 23 years. They look like they're having fun being together again. Still, where's Matt?

All in all, I'm glad to see Max Headroom again. I'm glad it's on DVD, a format that won't turn ghostly with repeated viewings.

Unfortunately, it looks ghostly right off the bat, and -- thanks to the digital age -- will remain so forever.