Critic Reviews

Think of Altered Carbon as a cyberpunk “Game of Thrones,” except that winter is already here, three centuries into the future.

An engaging cast of characters. ... It's clear that novelist Richard K. Morgan was influenced by "The Matrix" and "Bladerunner," but this series certainly stands on its own. Bay City is a captivating world filled with action and intrigue, making this a Netflix series you won't want to miss.

All of the body-hopping, impersonations, and lies could easily have grown messy, but the show manages to avoid any pitfalls around race representation.

When Altered Carbon is unafraid of embracing its the pulpiness at its core, it becomes both more enjoyable and more addictively textured.

Altered Carbon is a complicated, intriguing, ultraviolent, sex-filled and compelling blast, a visual delight that periodically gets tripped up with its writing but never enough to detour the experience. Altered Carbon is flawed, but it's also fantastic. This is binge-ready sci-fi for the masses.

The roads that Altered Carbon takes to its destination aren’t new to us but enough of us have enjoyed previous versions of these trips to appreciate this version of the ride.

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.

Mackie is up to the challenge of playing Kovacs as an interstellar Philip Marlowe. And with Netflix throwing cash at the screen, Altered Carbon also succeeds at the level of breathtaking spectacle. After a stuttering first season, a would-be blockbuster has belatedly but emphatically achieved lift-off.

Insanely violent, but, yup, often beautiful and intoxicating. A mind-bender that can be worth the bender.

When the season does intermittently sag beneath the weight of its extensive world-building and philosophical inquiries, Altered Carbon still manages to enthrall audiences with a winding detective mystery told in timeless noir fashion.