Max Headroom

Max Headroom is like Severance if you cranked the TV static to eleven and sprinkled in some 80s corporate paranoia. The show kicks off with Edison Carter (Matt Frewer), a journalist in a dystopian future where TV networks literally kill to keep ratings up. After he uncovers something shady, he crashes his bike and ends up in a coma—so the network copies his brain and accidentally creates Max (Frewer), this glitched-out digital version of himself who starts causing chaos on-air. It’s kind of like if Lumon took Mark’s consciousness and uploaded it into a sarcastic TV personality just to see what happens. Actually, Apple might need to greenlight that show.

There’s a remarkable scene in which Edison watches Max mock the very system that created him, and it feels a lot like Innie Helly trying to protest her own existence on the Severed Floor. Both shows are obsessed with identity being co-opted by corporations—Max is literally a personality split from his original self, used for corporate gain, just like the Innies. The vibe’s different—neon-soaked and jittery instead of sterile and quiet—but the core idea remains: when a company takes control of your identity, whatever’s left is just a fragment shaped to serve their needs.