“In my day, we didn’t have turkey. We had Christmas dog.”

Justin’s rating: Honestly, this makes me distrust turkeys

Justin’s review: One reason why I’m incredibly glad I grew up in the ’80s rather than the ’70s is that I narrowly escaped the era of the variety show. Other than The Muppet Show — which at least had puppets — variety shows always seemed like absolute filler material between the good stuff, like outer space adventures and scripted sitcoms.*

However, the variety show wasn’t completely dead in the ’80s, because it had a nasty habit of popping up over the holidays when networks were desperate and stars were open to some pocket money to pay off that Christmas Porsche. And that brings us to Max Headroom’s Giant Christmas Turkey, a bizarre variety hour that they sandwiched between the second and third seasons of the cyberpunk comedy series.

Max Headroom sits at the head table of the pantheon of ’80s icons, even though his presence no doubt puzzles younger generations. Matt Frewer (under heavy makeup to look like a CGI person, as no CGI of that era could actually create a fully animated character like this) played a wise-cracking and slightly unsettling-looking artificial intelligence that lived in whatever passed for the internet. His distinctive look, the voice modulation, and the occasional techno-stutter either endeared him to you or haunted your every waking thought.

So the question is, how does a computer character host a Christmas special in the real world? The answer is that he’s on a TV that everyone totes around and puts in front of celebrities counting the minutes until they can exit stage left and get paid.

This special is a combination of Max doing some standup and inviting a whole bunch of (definitely not creeped out) kids into his house to throw a Christmas party. Not sure why a computer character needs a fully furnished house, but we lack the great wisdom of the network studios. In any case, there’s not much of a storyline or plot, just one segment that flows into the next, pieced together by Max’s snarky ramblings. Then some celebrities would show up, like Tina Turner and Robin Williams, and some would sing. You were extra lucky if they did NOT sing.

Max Headroom’s whole thing is that he’s not completely stable, so putting him at the center of a holiday special invites a some subversive chaos. The question is, how much? Max kind of functions as a talk show host here, interacting with the guests and probably making a lot of these shockingly young kids cry between scenes. But other than some hyperactive visuals and occasional jabs at Christmas traditions, he’s not going to rewrite the holiday.

We do get some animation and even holiday stop motion, but that’s tempered by the sheer abundance of completely mediocre songs. Oh man, the songs. This is why I hated variety shows, the songs were never that good but did a good job eating up time.

Max Headroom’s Giant Christmas Turkey was the opportunity for Frewer to pull out as many impressions and silly voices that he could, but an hour is a long time to keep it going. He does an admirable job, though, and slings some genuinely funny jokes here and there. Unfortunately, it’s simply not enough to cover up the fact that there’s no momentum to any of this. Nobody was bothered to write a plot, so it’s simply 47 minutes of stuff happening before you can turn it off and audibly utter, “What the cyberhell was that?”

Maybe this special functions best being played in the background for weird ambience while you decorate the tree or count the calories in a cup of eggnog. But to tell the truth, I had more fun watching the silly commercials tucked into the middle of this.

*Or we got The Star Wars Holiday Special, which was all of these combined.