[settsu]

Personally, I don't think it has to hold up.

At least not necessarily in the way that this is generally meant, i.e., a timeless classic that more or less transcends the historical context that produced it and, probably most importantly, does not require the audience to know or grasp that historical context to appreciate it (even if understanding the context would add to the appreciation.)

However that doesn't mean it can be no less entertaining and interesting, just that it probably requires some context. This isn't an uncommon issue for popular media which, by definition, is a product of and for its time. Humor/comedy is especially notable for this. In my experience, very little comedy is truly timeless.

However, relevance can of course resurge (and I would make a distinction from more cyclical trends as is seen in fashion, for example.)

And thus I'd say Max Headroom was very much a product of its time and, aside from "ha-ha-old-tech!", you'd most likely need to have at least some knowledge of the social and political landscapes of the time to understand what and who it was satirizing.

But also, sometimes—often?—it's just capitalizing on the cultural moment.

[jfoutz]

I dunno. The specific mechanism of a reporter uncovering some bad actions and spreading the word on TV, may not hold up so well.

Corporation creates advertisements with, uh, bad side effects, and their own employee calls them out on it. That seems, pretty modern.

A good chunk of it is horribly dated. but some parts seemed really fresh. I think I rewatched ~ 4 years ago.

[shuntress]

> very little comedy is truly timeless

This depends almost entirely on the type of comedy. Things like reference, satire, or shock are obviously dependent on the specific context of time in which they were made and of course become less meaningful as times change.

But comedy is not inherently less "timeless" than any other art. Who's on First is genuinely still funny almost a century later.

The little bits of surviving ancient comedy may seem trite but being simple does not make the jokes less "timeless".

[jeramey]

Indeed. In the same vein, Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat" has made me laugh out loud more than a century after it was originally written.

That said, Shakespeare's humor, as an example, lands more flat with me. English idioms and grammar have changed quite a bit since the 16th century, and though I can intellectually approach his plays and recognize the humor, I rarely laugh out loud to it because there's additional mental load required just to understand what's been said. I suspect that may be true of "Who's on First" in another couple of hundred years, too. I'll report back in 2224 and let you know!

[caf]

I tend to agree that Who's On First is a exactly the sort comedy that will lose its pithiness in time, moored as it is to the cultural context of baseball and contemporary English wordplay.

[nzgrover]

One of my favourite lines is from Three men in a Boat: "George has a cousin, who is usually described in the charge-sheet as a medical student, so that he naturally has a somewhat family-physician way of putting things".