Whether accidental, insightful or just pain genius, Max Headroom’s depiction of things to come hit struck very close to target and packed more predictions about the future than Nostradamus’s secret diary. Bizarrely, the character of Max Headroom originated in the UK and was intended to be a computer-generated host of a music video program. A TV movie was filmed to give Max back-story and American network execs liked the concept so much that they filmed an entirely new pilot for a series on ABC.

In a dystopian, oppressive future society where corporations have turned television into mass crowd control, plucky boy reporter Carter Edison, played by Matt Frewer, discovers a sinister new development in the field of commercial TV, called blipverts: ultra short advertisements that transmit a glut of information to the audience at home. The sinister part comes where blipverts can overload some viewers’ brains and make them explode. While on his way to break the story, Carter has an accident, suffers head trauma and has his brain downloaded into his network’s computer so his boss can determine how much he really knows. Genius hacker Bryce Lynch not only downloads Carters brain but also manages to boot up a manifestation of his personality as a program whose first words are ‘Max Headroom’—the last thing Carter saw before colliding with a cautionary barrier.

Max is not an exact copy of Carter, though he has a lot of the unconscious man’s memories and knowledge. The computer version is significantly more unpredictable, unrestrained and uninhibited. Even after Carter revives, Max lives on in cyberspace, helping out in several investigations. Other central characters include Theora, a controller at the network; Grossberg, the malevolent network chairman; and Blank Reg, a member of the Blanks subculture who oppose the strict control of the networks.

This was a groundbreaking series exploring contemporary—and future—issues of technology’s role in society. Many concepts introduced in Max Headroom would come to pass in a few years, such as the worldwide web, constant public surveillance and the meld of televisions, computers and the Internet. The show became a cult sensation but failed to reach a wide audience and was canceled after only 14 episodes. Max, on the other hand, is an instantly recognized symbol of the 80s when the microchip-dependent society of today began to take shape.