Altered Carbon - Season 1 Review

Altered Carbon is a Netflix original Sci-Fi murder mystery series created by Laeta Kalogridis and based on the Richard K. Morgan novel of the same name. Set in the year 2384 civilization has discovered immortality and people are now able to essentially live forever by downloading their consciousness onto ‘’stacks’’ which are basically little hard drives in their necks. Stacks can be installed into any vacant body known as a ‘’sleeve’’ but if the Stack is destroyed you die, and it’s a real death. Our protagonist Takeshi Kovacs has been cryogenically frozen or ‘’on ice’’ for 250 years when he’s woken up by Laurens Bancroft, one of the wealthiest men alive, who offers him freedom and wealth to solve the mystery of his own murder. Nothing is as it seems, trust no one, not even yourself.   

I loved this show, I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did but I thought it was fucking great! I loved the premise and I love the world it takes place in, it’s like a cross between Blade Runner and Dollhouse. I’m a big fan of the tone it’s somewhere in between HBO and Fox style-wise and I thought it worked really well, there’s character here and it felt original, I was very entertained and the story had me gripped almost all the way through. I loved the story, it’s full of twists and turns and I thought they had some really interesting ideas and great characters and great dynamics between characters but it definitely gets a little convoluted and certain plots points don’t quite have the impact they should have.  

The idea of being able to put any stack in any sleeve leads to some great scenes like a Mexican grandmother visiting her family for Thanksgiving in the body of a White Supremacist and a wife returning to her husband in the body of a man, it’s just interesting visually and it’s handled well it’s not silly or anything. There’s also a lot of interesting stuff about the morality of being able to live forever and although I think their conclusion with it was a little clumsy it’s still a great concept. It’s an intriguing story and everything unfolds at a good pace, it’s got an excellent build, especially over the first few episodes and I enjoyed watching it unravel, it loses its footing when the backstory takes centre stage but I still enjoyed it.  

The performances were all great, Joel Kinnaman’s like a cross between Dominic West (McNulty from The Wire), Brian Thompson (the Alien Bounty Hunter in The X-Files) and Timothy Olyphant (Givens from Justified/Bullock from Deadwood), he was great as Takeshi Kovacs, he’s likeable and he works well as the lead. I was a big fan of James Purefoy’s performance as Mark Anthony in the HBO short-lived classic Rome and he delivers another excellent performance here as Laurens Bancroft! Martha Higareda was great as Kristin Ortega although she definitely took a few episodes to grow on me. Chris Conner was great as Edgar Poe and I loved the idea of his character being essentially the nucleus of an old fashioned American hotel from the 50’s, there’s a lot of great characters and all of the performances were great! 

There’s a little controversy with the amount of nudity but it’s completely justified given the premise, most of the time it’s just people waking up in new bodies which are naked because that’s how they’re preserved anyway! I see no controversy at all. There’s also controversy about white washing which I find ridiculous, yes it’s an Asian character and he’s in a white man’s body, so what? Again, that’s the premise, I’m not saying white washing doesn’t exist but this show certainly isn’t a case for it. I love Game of Thrones but let’s be honest it’s a world with about two or three black people and no Asians at all and it hasn’t received any backlash so why would Altered Carbon when it’s a much more racially representative show, it’s completely unjustified.  

All in all I really enjoyed Altered Carbon and I’d definitely recommend it to everyone, it’s a lot of fun and I found it very entertaining, it’s exciting and continuously intriguing, there’s a lot of interesting ideas and visuals throughout, it’s a great world, a great premise and I cared about the characters, I appreciated its originality, there’s a great use of music and I was invested in the story, I thought it was all executed very well and I’m very intrigued to see where they take the story in the second season, there’s infinite impossibilities! I’m gonna give the first season of Altered Carbon 8.1/10, I loved it. I’ll go into more detail on specifics in my spoiler review which I’ll post in a few hours so check back for that. Until next time my Steemian brethren!

What did you think of Altered Carbon?