Altered Carbon

:

Season 1
  • Network: Netflix
  • Series Premiere Date: Feb 2, 2018
Season #: 2, 1
User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 696 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 555 out of 696
  2. Mixed: 83 out of 696
  3. Negative: 58 out of 696
Watch Now

Where To Watch

Stream On

Review this tv show

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling

User Reviews

view
per page
  1. GraySummer
    Oct 14, 2021
    9
    I really enjoyed Season 1. I love the world building, concepts, style and tone of this show. I adore the Neo-noir and Cyberpunk pairing and Joel Kinnaman is great as the lead with some very memorable action scenes. Unfortunately some of it's moments are extremely cheesy and i didn't find the main villain particularly believable nor the flashback moments very watchable. This makes theI really enjoyed Season 1. I love the world building, concepts, style and tone of this show. I adore the Neo-noir and Cyberpunk pairing and Joel Kinnaman is great as the lead with some very memorable action scenes. Unfortunately some of it's moments are extremely cheesy and i didn't find the main villain particularly believable nor the flashback moments very watchable. This makes the second half of the season a bit of a disappointment as the potential was not fully realised. However there is a lot to love in the themes, presentation and main characters, thus overall this show has shaped up to be one of my biggest guilty pleasures. (shame about season 2)… Expand
  2. Adams1987
    Mar 27, 2021
    10
    Altered Carbon Season 1 is one of those shows you must watch absolutely amazing story and characters! just watch it and don't dare to watch season 2... your life will be much better without it...
  3. Club2020
    Oct 30, 2020
    10
    Great concept, brilliant acting, and story with some great twists and a very satisfying ending... 10 out of 1 stuff
  4. notings
    Aug 27, 2020
    10
    Świetny film aktor pięknie gra Moniką twarzy...............................
  5. Codex
    Jun 19, 2020
    10
    This season I fell in love with this world. It is a blast to watch from episode 1 onward. If you want a true cyberpunk experience, this is the show for you. It takes risks and it pays off in spades. But don't bother with season 2. It's hot garbage. 1 and done.
  6. Beauner
    Apr 11, 2020
    9
    This season is great.. Great atmosphere, great acting, intriguing story (not perfect, but very entertaining), Rated MA for holy **** over the top violence, blood, nudity, and bad assery. Unfortunately, they ruined everything with season 2. Do yourself a favor and stop after season 1 and call it good.
  7. stormtossed
    Apr 10, 2020
    8
    Amazing first season. This show had everything that an (adult) sci-fi lover could have ever wanted. Strong Blade Runner's vibes, creative and interesting world building, philosophical questions, great special effects.

    But what made this show stand out, was the depiction of adult themes: tons of sex, nudity, graphic violence. You couldn't look away. Always keeps you hooked. I strongly    Amazing first season. This show had everything that an (adult) sci-fi lover could have ever wanted. Strong Blade Runner's vibes, creative and interesting world building, philosophical questions, great special effects.

    But what made this show stand out, was the depiction of adult themes: tons of sex, nudity, graphic violence. You couldn't look away. Always keeps you hooked.

    I strongly recommend it.

    Too bad 2. season has lost everything that made this show special...    … Expand
  8. Plmnkoijbvhu
    Apr 9, 2020
    10
    A masterpiece. Truly one of my favorite sci fi shows ever. Sadly only the first season is good. They ruined it completely in the second.
  9. Bobbydownhill
    Mar 8, 2020
    8
    Cyberpunk sweetness and awesome cast and storytelling. Bit long list of executive producers instead of crediting the composer. But over all a very pleasant change of menu on Netflix
  10. ComandanteCobra
    Mar 4, 2020
    8
    Very good, hard sci-fi, a little old school (in a good cyber-punk way), good mix of action and drama. There is conspiracy, dystopian future, noire investigations, hot girls (also boys), gunfights, martial arts stunts, relation (and problemes) with technologies and dehumanization...and so on.
  11. Juhapekka
    Mar 3, 2020
    10
    The first season of AC blew my mind! The visual boldness, the cyberpunk world, and Kinnamans excellent stoic portrait of Kovacs played well with the gumshoe main storyline. The casual nudity that underlined the casual relationship people had with their sleeves were justified and made the whole thing more compelling. A brave and fresh addition to TV's scifi world by Netflix!
  12. N_ck-cz
    Mar 1, 2020
    6
    If you've read a book (like me), save time. Skydance made many changes in the story, adding a lot of cliches, empty dialogues, and cut out violent scenes and some important scenes, that they proppably dont understod it. But much of the story has remained and Joel Kinnaman is saving the result. If you don't know the book, be sure to try. Its still a good series (first one). If you are aIf you've read a book (like me), save time. Skydance made many changes in the story, adding a lot of cliches, empty dialogues, and cut out violent scenes and some important scenes, that they proppably dont understod it. But much of the story has remained and Joel Kinnaman is saving the result. If you don't know the book, be sure to try. Its still a good series (first one). If you are a book, you will most likely not like the result.… Expand
  13. AWESOM-0
    Feb 29, 2020
    5
    Yeah this one misses the mark. Looks great but it loses what makes the novel so good. I can accept adaptions making changes but not when it loses it soul (metaphorically speaking).
  14. Pi0
    Feb 27, 2020
    10
    One of the best shows on netflix. And one of the best scify blade runner atmosphere shows ever. Great casting, great main actor. A believable world with a good looking enviroment. And disapointing what turned out in season 2... Season 1... was another class
  15. Huey_Kratos
    Nov 5, 2019
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The Ending Sucks, i mean who chooses a new piece of ass over their own sister. Who had been looking for you so long.… Expand
  16. JonsGone
    May 9, 2019
    5
    Staggeringly boring.
    Painfully drawn out with sigh-inducing flashbacks.
    The whole thing could have been a movie but it just HAD to be a series.
    The promising investigation plot takes a backseat on Kovacs's brooding train.
    Only two "good" characters in the entire cast, Poe and the asian nutjob.
    Forecast calls for rain. Rain all the time. Rain everywhere.
    Do not bother.
  17. JulianIncen
    May 5, 2019
    5
    I had a hard time getting into the world of 'Altered Carbon'. It's slow and just when it seems to take off, it needs a transition episode to get to the real action.
  18. MasteroMustache
    Mar 13, 2019
    4
    What a mess. The acting is inconsistent, with some actors passable, others good to great, and some truly horrendous. The plot and writing are cringe-worthy. I can't count how many times I turned to my wife during our viewing of the series and stared blankly at a plot point that just occurred or at a line that an actor muttered. With respect to the story, character motivations, and sci fiWhat a mess. The acting is inconsistent, with some actors passable, others good to great, and some truly horrendous. The plot and writing are cringe-worthy. I can't count how many times I turned to my wife during our viewing of the series and stared blankly at a plot point that just occurred or at a line that an actor muttered. With respect to the story, character motivations, and sci fi elements, everything is just so far over the top that nothing feels organic or anything approaching real. I wanted to stop after the 5th or 6th episode but glumly finished the series just to see if it improved. It decidedly did not.… Expand
  19. Crythor
    Mar 8, 2019
    10
    After watching game of thrones (which i love) i didnt think that any series would take away my breath any time soon. Man was i wrong. Altered carbon is the sci-fi quality equivalent to game of thrones. The effects are unrivaled currently and the story is thrilling. Great characters, great world but dont take my word for it watch it.
  20. angelknives
    Dec 10, 2018
    7
    Altered Carbon is a show full of interesting world building, ideas, and premises that never get used to their full potential. The first few episodes set up so many interesting ideas about AIs, immortality, class struggle, and even aliens, but the rest of the season fails to follow through on these set-ups.

    The main offender is the final part of the season, when a sudden new surprise    Altered Carbon is a show full of interesting world building, ideas, and premises that never get used to their full potential. The first few episodes set up so many interesting ideas about AIs, immortality, class struggle, and even aliens, but the rest of the season fails to follow through on these set-ups.

    The main offender is the final part of the season, when a sudden new surprise antagonist is introduced. The character and the storyline attached to them is incredibly cliched, boring the audience with how predictable it makes the show. And the worst part is that this storyline takes away time from the actually interesting parts of the story. Parts that are left horribly underdeveloped.

    The ending itself is probably the weakest part of the show, tying up everything in neat little bows, presented to the audience in the most easily digestible form, narration.

    All in all, the show does have a very interesting world, and while the writing sometimes suffered from awkward dialogue and lacklustre plotting, I still enjoyed it. I think the lead actors are probably to thank for that, as they really sold the story to me, even when the story itself failed.    … Expand
  21. ZackMurph
    Dec 3, 2018
    10
    Is the show perfect? Absolutely not , but it adventures to try to be something creative and to a degree it's fresh.

    The acting is absolutely fantastic with characters sometimes taking on multiple personality and fitting the roles perfectly. Though there are a few characters I wouldn't have minded having less screen time. The overall characters and performance were enjoyable. This    Is the show perfect? Absolutely not , but it adventures to try to be something creative and to a degree it's fresh.

    The acting is absolutely fantastic with characters sometimes taking on multiple personality and fitting the roles perfectly. Though there are a few characters I wouldn't have minded having less screen time. The overall characters and performance were enjoyable.

    This show does take a sci-fi type of fan in order to hit a 10/10 mark. Everyone else will probably give it a 5/10-8/10 because of issues with the plot or long drawn out back stories. Even I have to admit that the season had a few segments of emptiness that could have either been cut or redone to make the overall story more compelling.

    In all, Altered Carbon isn't your run of the mill world breaking tv series but it definitely hits a lot of notches within many sci-fi fans belts and the average viewer can easily enjoy the show as well. If the writers learn their lessons from the first season and apply that knowledge to the second. Then I could easily see the show's fanbase growing.    … Expand
  22. MahbubAli92
    Nov 27, 2018
    0
    Altered Carbon is a terrible show, an awful, fifth-rate, cheapo Westworld/Blade Runner knockoff that staggers like an obese drunk under the weight of its cliches, wooden performances, and hacky script, until it finally collapses into a gutter of oblivious pointlessness.

    More specifically: - There is nothing remotely fresh or creative about it. From the plot to the character    Altered Carbon is a terrible show, an awful, fifth-rate, cheapo Westworld/Blade Runner knockoff that staggers like an obese drunk under the weight of its cliches, wooden performances, and hacky script, until it finally collapses into a gutter of oblivious pointlessness.

    More specifically:

    - There is nothing remotely fresh or creative about it. From the plot to the character archetypes to the twists, it constantly rips off both old-school noirs like The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, and cyberpunk sci-fi like Blade Runner and The Matrix. It does this in a very heavy-handed and amateurish way.

    - The characters are all thin and unengaging. The good guys are all superficially cynical but with idealistic hearts of gold beneath. Their relationships to one another are forced and implausible. The villains are all simplistically irredeemable **** You'll forget everyone's name within 24 hours of finishing the last episode.

    - The premise of "stacks" and "sleeves" never rises beyond the level of a gimmick. It doesn't lead to any truly interesting examinations of human nature, aside from the very obvious and cliched conclusion that such a technology is hubristic and inhuman and ought to be destroyed.

    - The show seems to think it's very funny when someone gets put in the wrong "sleeve" and e.g. a hulking tattooed biker guy needs to pretend to be a Mexican grandma, but it's nothing we haven't seen a million times before and isn't handled with any particular wit here.

    - It thinks it's "deep" but it actually has a childishly black-and-white moral universe, where the bad guys like to rape and murder women for kicks and the good guys want to stop them. The villains are so cartoonishly evil and one-dimensional the show might as well be scrawled in crayon.

    - It's larded with grating political correctness (this is becoming a huge problem with most Netflix content). By the time you meet the 5th or 6th female minority character who just so happens to be both an ass-kicking kung fu master (despite weighing 120 lbs) AND a STEM genius l33t hacker, even the most diehard SJW will be rolling their eyes. The tokenism is off the charts.

    - Meanwhile other than the protagonist every white man is either a gangbanger (LOL realism!) or a comically sociopathic and megalomaniacal villain.

    - Since Netflix desperately wants to be a "prestige" studio like HBO, it's tarted up with lots of gratuitous and pointless nudity, Tarantino-esque gore, and crappy quick-cut kung fu fight scenes.

    - Even so, it looks cheap, like most Netflix content. Aside from a few pricey-but-brief CGI establishing shots, the sets and props look like cosplay gear, and there are no truly impressive action setpieces (mostly just kung fu fights in living rooms and corridors).

    - Relatedly, the camera almost never follows the characters through a scene because the sets are small and isolated. Spectacular events like the death of all the Uprising fighters always happen off-camera. Details like these add up and make the show's world feel fake and non-immersive.

    - The action scenes are terrible, both over-choreographed and poorly executed. They use lots of fast cuts to make it look like the scrawny women characters can fight, but it just looks like a joke. It's also absurd and cheesy that in this high tech future so many people fight with samurai swords (LOL wut?) and knives.

    - Remember that cool iconic gun the hero got that can shoot flechettes and magnetically pull them back? He uses it exactly once, then we never see it again (special effects cost money after all!)

    Avoid this show, it is dull and stupid and not worth your precious time.    … Expand
  23. Averno
    Oct 27, 2018
    10
    My favorite show for several years. Excellent visuals, compelling story, stellar world-building.
  24. LulzTV
    Sep 29, 2018
    9
    Altered Carbon is currently the best show on netflix. The special effects are spectacular, the directing and writing are spot on, the atmosphere feels and the world building is great. This show is fantastic.
  25. hornysoul
    Sep 21, 2018
    7
    Admito que este tipo de séries nunca me fascinou, mas até foi bom perder algumas horas do meu tempo livre a ver esta produção. A série começou com o pé errado, na minha opinião, mas até conseguiu dar a volta ao longo dos episódios seguintes... A atuação dos atores foi OK e a história prendou-me.
  26. Dubeau
    Aug 3, 2018
    8
    Really nice mystery sci-fi flick. A bit slow to start but after episode 4 this gets on going in a big time. The story is complex but in many ways about family love and hates. It borrows from Blade Runner's looks but for most of it, it's a detective story. The main hero wasn't that amazing. A bit of overacting, but all the other characters are extremely solid in their performance. The FXReally nice mystery sci-fi flick. A bit slow to start but after episode 4 this gets on going in a big time. The story is complex but in many ways about family love and hates. It borrows from Blade Runner's looks but for most of it, it's a detective story. The main hero wasn't that amazing. A bit of overacting, but all the other characters are extremely solid in their performance. The FX were decent for TV show. The sexuality was depicted in a very nice aesthetically way. No for kids or young adults. I give it 78%. Good sci-fi.Renewed for Season 2!… Expand
  27. Gogglebox
    Jul 11, 2018
    8
    Overall very good if you like sci fi. Plot may be too complicated for some but I liked its deepening backstory. First episode was intriguing but second or third a bit iffy, but story got more interesting. Glad I kept watching. It could stand alone as a story but a second season would be welcome in our household of adults and older teens.
  28. gandalfsucks
    Jul 9, 2018
    8
    An excellently constructed Blade Runner-type world. The characters are compelling, and the acting is par Netflix originals. The production value is through the roof, but the overall series is hamstrung by the middling story, as has become common with my experiences with Netflix originals. An unnecessary murder mystery along with a few other side mysteries for what is essentially a familyAn excellently constructed Blade Runner-type world. The characters are compelling, and the acting is par Netflix originals. The production value is through the roof, but the overall series is hamstrung by the middling story, as has become common with my experiences with Netflix originals. An unnecessary murder mystery along with a few other side mysteries for what is essentially a family drama. Some events, especially towards the end, occur for no other reason other than being necessary for the lazy scriptwriter. The show spends way too much time dealing with relationship dynamics that will be useful only if they ever make a second season, or if they had spent more time in this one. You expect the story to break the traditional rules set by the world, but when the rule breaking becomes commonplace by meaningless characters, it loses the impact. Good effort, but quite a few irksome story points.… Expand
  29. shinbo
    Jul 3, 2018
    6
    Amazing visuals, great world design which makes me want to read the novel to explore the world further. Mix of Blade Runner, Shadowrun universes with a touch of Matrix. Gratuitous nudity, violence and gore, almost as if the producers stole a side glance at HBO and thought "Viewers are really into nipples and human flaying".

    The series is unfortunately let down by cheesy writing and    Amazing visuals, great world design which makes me want to read the novel to explore the world further. Mix of Blade Runner, Shadowrun universes with a touch of Matrix. Gratuitous nudity, violence and gore, almost as if the producers stole a side glance at HBO and thought "Viewers are really into nipples and human flaying".

    The series is unfortunately let down by cheesy writing and characters. It's not even campy cheese, it's try-hard one-dimensional cheese. Some of the dialogue is corny and delivered with the finesse of a daytime soap opera. Poe the AI hotel is by far the most relateable and interesting character, who unfortunately is featured sparsely. Imagine if GoT made Tyrion Lannister a minor side character.

    It's probably worth a watch, if only to feast on the visual design of the world.    … Expand
  30. night4
    Jun 13, 2018
    5
    It's ok. The acting is good, the effects are good, the fights are good. The story is mediocre.

    The biggest problem is that the "murder mystery" is completely forgotten by a few episodes in. In fact, it's just one long flashback after another, until entire episodes are flashbacks. I have flashback whiplash at this point. And it becomes so convoluted it's not even funny. I don't    It's ok. The acting is good, the effects are good, the fights are good. The story is mediocre.

    The biggest problem is that the "murder mystery" is completely forgotten by a few episodes in. In fact, it's just one long flashback after another, until entire episodes are flashbacks. I have flashback whiplash at this point.

    And it becomes so convoluted it's not even funny.

    I don't think I'll be watching another season.    … Expand
prev
Page:

Awards & Rankings

2
#2 Most Discussed TV Season of 2018
30
#30 Most Shared TV Season of 2018

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
64

Generally favorable reviews - based on 25 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 25
  3. Negative: 0 out of 25
  1. The Detroit News
    Reviewed by: Adam Graham
    Mar 1, 2018
    50
    Big issues of body, mind, identity and technology shuffle around the Altered Carbon universe, but the show often drags its feet in order to fill its individual episodes’ running times.
    Read full review
  2. Vox.com
    Reviewed by: Emily VanDerWerff
    Feb 5, 2018
    80
    For a series that makes a lot of basic storytelling stumbles and often seems to feature characters who can only speak in exposition, Altered Carbon’s first season is surprisingly gripping, especially in its superior back half. This is probably the best first season of a Netflix drama since The Crown’s first year dropped in late 2016.
    Read full review
  3. The Atlantic
    Reviewed by: Sophie Gilbert
    Feb 5, 2018
    50
    Altered Carbon is so busy trying to wow viewers by constantly one-upping the imagery and the intensity that it barely pauses to consider its story. The writing is also distinctly clunky: a hodgepodge of vacant platitudes and canned spirituality.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »