#Altered carbon reviews series#

For long stretches, however, “Altered Carbon” asks Kinnaman to stay in the slightly cynical, tough-guy mode recognizable from countless films about private detectives down on their luck. For much of “Altered Carbon,” Kovacs, a former soldier with a murky past, is played by Joel Kinnaman, an actor capable of great subtlety and emotional transparency. The gray weather often suits the mood of Takashi Kovacs, who has woken up from a 250-year sleep and been unwillingly stuck with the job of solving a rich man’s murder. Dick’s Electric Dreams” play out at once.

#Altered carbon reviews series#

Some of the cityscapes look like they came directly from the Ridley Scott classic, and on a narrative level, watching the first few installments of “Altered Carbon” feels like seeing several different scenarios from the Amazon anthology series “Philip K. In the early going, this highly serialized tale, which is based on a novel by Richard Morgan, can come off as a bit too imitative of “Blade Runner”-esque projects and the film noir genre.

The metaphor of many iterations - copies that evolve or degrade depending on the resources available - is an apt one for “Altered Carbon,” which mixes together a host of familiar sci-fi ideas and storytelling conventions.

These extensions are only possible for individuals with sufficient funds, of course: Living forever, which involves growing or acquiring an array of sleeves, is for the very rich. “ Altered Carbon” is packed with facsimiles: The main conceit of this slow-building but satisfying series is that people can download their consciousness into a series of bodies, or “sleeves,” indefinitely.