Max Headroom

Author: Annabel Jankel And Rocky Morton

Have you ever wondered who saw the future the most accurately? The answer happens to be the creators ofMax Headroom who really understood what would be happening in the media about twenty-five years later. The Earth is run by a consortium of television networks. The voice of reason on all of this is Edison Carter, an investigative journalist who ends up wrecking his body in a chase, being uploaded to a mainframe, and living out his days as Max Headroom within the network. The series predicted the 24-hour newscycle, media outlet consolidation, the collapse of traditional journalistic ethics, and especially the world of off-the-gird livers. The entire series was just about as Cyberpunk as you were going to find on American TV, partly because it started life as a British television show, that then exported their lead to the US in the series... and as the spokesentity for New Coke. The computer animation techniques, which seem primative today, were actually fairly cutting edge, and the balanace between a gritty, Bladerunner-like city with the clean lines of Max Headroom, was a part of the absolute charm of the series. It also made a star of Matt Frewer, who played Max, with a style that he's carried over into 30 yeras of further roles. Why it's on the list: No other series made as bold a vision of the future that ended up being as close as Max Headroom.