Altered Carbon
Our Review
The most visually opulent cyberpunk ever put on TV. Richard Morgan’s novel — a murder mystery 500 years in the future, where human consciousness is stored in cortical stacks and bodies are sleeves you can swap — became a Netflix flagship: Takeshi Kovacs, a rebel Envoy soldier waking in a new sleeve (Joel Kinnaman) to investigate a billionaire’s apparent suicide, which the billionaire himself hired him to solve. The neon-noir Bay City is stunning: AI hotels (Poe, the show’s best character — a humanist AI in a rat-trap hotel), needle torture, knife fights, and a class critique sharpened to a point: the rich literally live forever; the poor are one backup away from oblivion.
Season 1 is a complete, satisfying mystery with real philosophical bite (the Bancroft family’s decadence, the Envoy backstory, the Rei reveal). Season 2 (Anthony Mackie in the Kovacs sleeve) is leaner and shallower — the Quellcrist arc goes full revolutionary-romance and loses the noir. But the world-building, the design, and the fight choreography justify the trip. Cyberpunk TV hasn’t topped it.
Verdict: Watch season 1 as a complete story. Season 2 if you want more of the world.