The City of Next Week (a brief re/preview).

Recently, I've gone on something of a downloading binge. And when I mean binge, I mean it in a very real, hard-drive filling sense. I view it as something of an opportunity to have a look at some shows/movies/etc that have intrigued me for some time. Among this torrent (ha, ha!) of new media, I've come across something of a gem in Max Headroom.

Firstly, it's really, really quite prudent to note that the show is just about as old as I am. A little younger, to be perfectly fair, it was canceled, precisely, on my second birthday, after running for only a little over a year. With this in mind, the opening theme is in classic "overload-your-senses-with-synths-because-rock-is-dead" 80s-style, the special effects (aside Max himself) aren't stellar, and you'll be repeatedly stricken with the feeling "I think I've seen that guy before.

Don't let that frighten you off, though. The pilot of Max Headroom at the very least is full of dark hilarity, decent acting, a wonderful multitude of Cyberpunk themes (Wikipedia calls it the first prime-time cyberpunk show in the United States), and a strange sort of prescience on more than one occasion.

I found torrents of seasons one and two on ISOHunt, and as they've been released by the Digital Archive Project, they're guilt-free (the series proper has not been offered on DVD). You can get the series there, or simply wait until the next LAN.

Oz K. Fodrotski out.