Max Headroom's "War"

I rarely review individual episodes of a series, but Max Headroom is so good that I did want to talk about one particular excellent episode: War. In this episode, the lead character Eddison Carter starts covering a terrorist group (the White Brigade) which is launching attacks on the lower-end parts of Eddison's city. In a stunning twist, however, the terrorist is being funded by network tv to provide "entertainment terrorism", in order to keep the ratings up for certain networks. "War" is an exceptional episode, even if I do detect a certain amount of traditional Brit anti-Irish bias here. The idea of the media literally funding terrorism, of terrorists using special effects demonstrations in place of actual terrorist demolitions, etc. is truly mindblowing. Obviously, there are parallels between the White Brigade and groups like Fox News, that provide the same sort of terrorist "media events", which later turn out to be nothing. I think Max Headroom could do a slightly better job of paralleling government and corporate interests, but that's no fault of Headroom. In fact it's a tribute to the series, one of the few sci-fi series that imagined the future would be even worse than it is now. So, friends, if you get a chance, check it out.