TV on DVD: 'Max Headroom' still holds up

MAX HEADROOMSeries "Twenty minutes into the future" actually looks like today in ABC's pointedly whimsical 1987 "fantasy" drama, set in a cyberpunk urban landscape dominated by hypercompetitive TV channels pumping their minute-by-minute ratings. Matt Frewer's one-man-band reporter Edison Carter takes on greedy corporations, violent sports, corrupt evangelists, organ-theft rings, sleazy media execs and other futuristic, uh, fiction. Despite its '80s vintage, this cult fave still dazzles with its omnipresent multimedia screens, envisioned a decade before the World Wide Web and the 500-channel universe. There's also c-c-cracked commentary from Carter's giddy computer-generated avatar, M-M-Max Headroom.

Extras Entire disc, packed with new goodies: making-of hour with creative team, featurettes on technology and production design, cast roundtable including Jeffrey Tambor and Amanda Pays, other cast/writer interviews. Plus booklet with episode guide /essays, tucked into morphing-Max lenticular sleeve.

List price $50 for all 14 episodes on five discs, out today from Shout.

Also outPRIME-TIME CRIME: STEPHEN J. CANNELL COLLECTION Ten discs with four complete short-run '90s action series ("Missing Persons," "UNSUB," "Palace Guard," "Broken Badges"), plus sample episodes from nine more ("Wiseguy," "The Commish," "The Greatest American Hero," "21 Jump Street," "Booker," "Hunter," "Cobra," "Silk Stalkings," "Tenspeed & Brown Shoe"); $30, Mill Creek.

- DIANE WERTS