Max Headroom coming to DVD in August
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I just watched the original 20 Minutes Into the Future, and it's really cool comparing the two versions, since certain elements of the ABC production are identical to the BBC version, and others are wildly divergent.
Max Headroom Chronicles: S-S-Start Here
And it's great to Google 'max headroom' nowadays, because the whole Interwebs are ablaze with the headline "Max Headroom FINALLY coming to DVD!"
Shout! Factory has a great little promo video running on their site...
Shout! Factory - Music, Movies and Video for the discerning Pop Culture Geek
If that's the unexpectedly good (IMHO) 1990s live action series with Yvette Nipar among the cast and some nice satirical plots about 'Commander Cash', then it has been releasedin Region 2. (Or so I assume: they only sent me the first disc for review, and I never got round to buying it as I already had most of the episodes on VHS)
^ Lemme just add to the RoboCop: The Series love.
When I'd first heard it announced, I couldn't imagine that scenario played out sans Verhoeven-esque carnage & gore.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that lots could be done with kid-friendly, blood-free storytelling! The acting & writing was good, the cinematography appropriately noirish, the tech & gadgets sufficiently cool... and it had Andrea Roth! (Though Yvette Nipar was nice, too!)
When I'd first heard it announced, I couldn't imagine that scenario played out sans Verhoeven-esque carnage & gore.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that lots could be done with kid-friendly, blood-free storytelling! The acting & writing was good, the cinematography appropriately noirish, the tech & gadgets sufficiently cool... and it had Andrea Roth! (Though Yvette Nipar was nice, too!)
Oh yes, that is the show that featured the glory of Yvette Nipar.
Even if I didn't love a lot of other stuff about the show, I would've been a loyal viewer for her alone."Nice" doesn't even begin to cover it. Did I mention
?But yeah, Andrea Roth was pretty cool too. Diana was a good confidante and friend for RoboCop, someone who was a kindred spirit, and she helped humanize him and give him more facets. Always good to have multiple characters who relate to the hero in different ways; adds depth and variety. Although Diana could be too handy a deus ex machina (semi-literally) at times.
And the gadgets were definitely cool. As I mentioned, the showrunner was an ex-cop, and he worked some interesting police futurism into the show, featuring nonlethal restraint devices that were really being researched for police use, like slippery foam for crowd control and quick-inflating airbags to fire into vehicles and immobilize their occupants. (Developed in real life for use against people in cars, though in the show they were used in a boat once and to block a doorway once.) And I liked the "Chinese finger puzzle" cuffs that they used instead of handcuffs. Those would be pretty much impossible to pick.
You know what? Come to think of it, I can see Max Headroom fitting pretty neatly into the RoboCop: The Series world. The two shows were pretty similar in their satirical, corporate-dominated futures and to some extent in their senses of humor.
I also seem to recall that the police-issue pistols had an LED readout on the side to display different modes, such as "TAG".
When Robo's thigh panels opened up, it was always like Felix the Cat's Bag 'o' Tricks! Whatcha got in there, big fella?
Interesting. I've never seen Max Headroom but I've heard a lot about it. I'll need to check it out. (IIRC, the closest I've come to seeing the series up until now was the Cafe '80s sequence in Back to the Future, Part II.)
As for my DVD holy grail, there are 2:
7 Days. The 1998-2001 UPN series about a secret government program to send Lt. Frank Parker back in time 7 days to avert various disasters. I love it because Jonathan LaPaglia was a great, charismatic lead; Justina Vail brought just the right amount of love/hate sparks to Parker's relationship with Olga Vukavitch; and Nathan Ramsay was a perfect anal-retentive foil for Parker, in the tradition of Frank Burns on M*A*S*H or Arnold Rimmer on Red Dwarf.
Made in Canada Seasons 2-5. Salter Street Films managed to release the 1st season on DVD before they went broke. Now I'm just waiting for the remainder of this razor-sharp show biz satire about unscrupulous Canadian TV producers. "I am Damacles!"
As for my DVD holy grail, there are 2:
7 Days. The 1998-2001 UPN series about a secret government program to send Lt. Frank Parker back in time 7 days to avert various disasters. I love it because Jonathan LaPaglia was a great, charismatic lead; Justina Vail brought just the right amount of love/hate sparks to Parker's relationship with Olga Vukavitch; and Nathan Ramsay was a perfect anal-retentive foil for Parker, in the tradition of Frank Burns on M*A*S*H or Arnold Rimmer on Red Dwarf.
Made in Canada Seasons 2-5. Salter Street Films managed to release the 1st season on DVD before they went broke. Now I'm just waiting for the remainder of this razor-sharp show biz satire about unscrupulous Canadian TV producers. "I am Damacles!"
I used to love this show. While the idea of a bunch of television networks essentially running the world is quite quaint in the internet age, there's still a message to be had there about media conglomerates, advertising, and the proliferation of information.
They could easily update Max Headroom for the Internet age, with he being a virtual Internet avatar. Even a TV movie. And hell, you could (and should) still use Matt Frewer, it's not like age matters when you're simply doing a voice over.
They could easily update Max Headroom for the Internet age, with he being a virtual Internet avatar. Even a TV movie. And hell, you could (and should) still use Matt Frewer, it's not like age matters when you're simply doing a voice over.
That one's definitely on my list, along with South Beach, the Modesty Blaise-like secret agent series Butler made for Dick Wolf the year after Mann and Machine (it also featured John Glover of Smallville fame). Both series only lasted 10 episodes - I can't see why they couldn't be released in a single set. I agree Butler's performances in both were terrific and it's a shame her star never rose the way it should have.
And yes, as far as I'm concerned the release of Small Wonder -- which I have now even seen in stores like Wal-Mart that refuse to carry things like Doctor Who DVDs -- has set the precedent. And unlike Batman I can't imagine there being huge issues regarding the rights to Mann and Machine and South Beach. The only thing I can imagine is that Law & Order's Dick Wolf, who was the creator/producer of both series, doesn't want them released.
Alex
My other biggest DVD wish is Legend, the Michael Piller-created steampunk Western starring Richard Dean Anderson as a dissolute, reluctant hero who was basically Mark Twain crossed with Oscar Wilde, partnered with John DeLancie as a semi-mad scientist who was basically Nikola Tesla. A terrific, literately written, superbly produced show that only ran for 13 episodes because UPN did a criminally bad job promoting it. (What they should've done from the start was to air it right after Voyager and advertise it as "From the co-creator of Star Trek: Voyager." But by the time they finally started doing that, they'd already decided to cancel the show.)
I never even heard of this show, but it sounds right up my alley. I'm a big fan of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., another steampunk western series.
Also, two other westerns, Lazarus Man starring Robert Urich, and Bordertown, about a frontier town on the US-Canada border, administered by government elements from both nations.
Also, two other westerns, Lazarus Man starring Robert Urich, and Bordertown, about a frontier town on the US-Canada border, administered by government elements from both nations.
I just watched Matt Frewer in a Sherlock Holmes movie the other day. He did a good job, although the performance border lined caricature at times.
He's always struck me as a good, wholly underrated character actor.
He's always struck me as a good, wholly underrated character actor.
The show was somewhat prescient concerning the future of TV as a huge number of channels driven by competition and economics to bottom-of-the-budget "reality" programming, along with a quaintly-visualized but pervasive image of everyone accessing video everywhere all the time.
And aren't there real "blipverts"?
The show was somewhat prescient concerning the future of TV as a huge number of channels driven by competition and economics to bottom-of-the-budget "reality" programming, along with a quaintly-visualized but pervasive image of everyone accessing video everywhere all the time.
That's science fiction for you. Usually gets the details of the technology wrong, but is often prescient when it comes to its social impact.
Max Headroom isn't a western, though. It's closer in spirit to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, with a healthy dose of Orwell and a dash of Running Man.
I believe some broadcasters have tried them, but they haven't caught on. No word as to whether any explosive side-effects have been noted.
Closest I've seen are the 4-5 second "stings" that the BBC uses to advertise things like Doctor Who. And I recently heard a radio commercial that had some legal disclaimer at the end, and it (the disclaimer) was sped up so fast it came out sounding like a single word.
Except in this case they got a lot of the technology right too, from interactive AI (though Ananova, a major attempt at doing a real-life Max Headroom - as opposed to a live actor in makeup - fell apart), to the 5 million-channel universe, to ubiquitous surveillance, to media corporations running the world. Heck wasn't there even a news report last year about a "Body Bank"-style operation that was exposed in South America or Asia? Hell, as the baby boomers enter their 60s we're even starting to see Blank Reg-style lifestyles popping up.
I'm actually trying to think of thematic elements of Max Headroom that haven't in some respects come true in the last 25 years.
Alex
I think stonester1 is referring to the show Christopher mentioned. With Richard Dead Anderson.
Count me in as also excited for this release. I'll probably rent though...well...maybe. We'll see.
I thought it was brilliant.