The style wasn’t the substance, but the style was inherent in the substance, not in a medium-is-the-message way but medium-as-the- warning way. Could the reality of the show today, seen once again through my jaded eyes in this science fictional year 2010, possibly stand up against my memories of it?īut there it is: Max Headroom is even more mindblowing today, for its unwitting prescience, for its daring satire (I can’t believe they got away with some of what they got away with on network television), and for its frenetic, and pointedly so, style. It’s been almost a quarter of a century since Max Headroom graced our screens so briefly, but my memories of it have never faded, so great was the impact it had on my nerdy young brain. I approached this five-disc set - which includes lots of extras, including a 14th episode that never aired during the original run - with some trepidation. Horrifying as that may be, I’m so glad this is the case.

Max is even more hugely discomforting now than it was once upon a time. Watching this show again today is to see the fears of the past made real in our present today. As demonstrates Max Headroom, the visionary 1987-1988 ABC science fiction series now finally available on Region 1 DVD thanks to Shout! Factory. Sometimes, though, those fears end up being legitimate.

Despite the common misconception, science fiction has never been about predicting the future: when it appears to, it’s really just reflecting the fears of the moment it’s created in.

Max headroom episode 1