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Max Headroom ran on ABC from March 31, 1987 until May 5, 1988.

The show was set in a near future dystopia where society was ruled by an oligarchy of television networks. Even the government functioned primarily as a puppet of the network executives, where it passed laws that protected and consolidated the networks' power. The television technology can monitor viewers' physical movements and even their thoughts. Most non-TV technology has been discontinued or destroyed.

The only real check on the power of the networks is Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), a crusading investigative journalist who regularly exposes the unethical practices of his employers, and a team of allies both in and outside the system who assist Carter so that he can get his reports on the air, and protect him from the forces that wish to silence him.

During a motorcycle accident where Carter was injured, his mind was uploaded into a computer. The computer reconstruction calls himself Max Headroom, because those were the words on a sign (Maximum Headroom) just prior to the accident. Max is a wisecracking observer of human contradictions. Despite being the titular character, Max sparsely appeared on the show. Occasionally, he does play a significant role in stories. He is able to travel through the networks in order to obtain information germane to the plot. Mostly Max provided comic relief, delivering brief quips in reaction to events, and giving a humorous soliloquy at the end of an episode.

According to the series' creators, Max's personality was meant to be a satirical exaggeration of the worst tendencies of TV hosts in the 1980s who wanted to appeal to the youth culture, yet were not a part of it. Matt Frewer proposed that Max reflected an innocence, largely influenced not by mentors and life experience but by information absorbed from television.

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Max was a thoughtfully done science fiction series with a fine cast. It tackled topical issues even though there was a somewhat satiric angle to it. The pervasiveness & power of the TV networks is inspired by George Orwell's classic novel 1984.

The series is now 37-years old. Since then, the media and number of television channels available to us has exploded in numbers. The networks are now owned by powerful corporations and they tell those news networks what to report, under-report, or just ignore.