Altered Carbon

DATE

Debuts Feb. 2

TIME

Streaming

NETWORK

Netflix

REVIEW BY

Darren Franich @DarrenFranich

- Patrick Gomez

I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE ALTERED CARBON HAPPENED. Adapted from Richard K. Morgan’s 2002 novel, the Netflix series has a planetary budget and galactic ambitions. It’s neon-grim cyberpunk noir, a subgenre we could just call “Blade Runner-ish.” But it branches into a grander tradition of space adventure, with a legendary hero preaching rebel mysticism to a plucky anti-fascist commune. Oh, and there’s a body-swapping premise. In the future, humans download their consciousness onto cyber soul disks (“stacks”) that outlive biological death and are put into new bodies (“sleeves”). Altered Carbon begins when someone wakes up in Joel Kinnaman’s body—like we all would, just once, in a better world than this.