Max Headroom on the w.w.web

Max Headroom, where information can’t be free but is occasionally let out on bail.

There’s many great unsolved mysteries life. Where do we come from? What is the meaning of Life? The biggest mystery of all is, given the spread of the internet and the World Wide Web, why hasn’t Max Headroom returned to the mainstream? It’s now available via Joost, at least in the USA and UK. I don’t know about availability in other countries. If you haven’t seen it, it’s not just about a talking head. Max Headroom is set 20 minutes into the future in a consumer-driven dystopia. In might be the first cyberpunk TV series.

Some of the future it portrays is dated, I love the handsets on the video phones, but in other ways it’s still visionary. The episode on censorship for instance and its relationship to education is similar to the open access debate today. Still sometimes it’s badly wrong. In the Episode Grossberg’s Return one of the Network 66 executives is concerned that viewers will leave the network if it has no credibility.

Insert a joke about the news network of your choice here.

Joost is a free download for Windows and MacOS. Adverts in the programmes fund them, and there’s quite few advert breaks, but they’re short. To be honest apart from Max, there’s nothing else which grabs me. Your opinion may differ if you’re a fan of Lexx.