Altered Carbon
This must have been one of the first things I watched on Netflix, as I can remember quite a lot of it, but it was several years ago and I think that I must’ve watched it on an iPad, as the big wall TV in the den is fairly recent.
I’m not sure that I made it to the end originally, and certainly the smaller screen took away much of the impact and my understanding, because it is only on this rewatch that I have appreciated just how good it is!
Also read the book, but that was even longer ago, and I’ve given it away since, so I can’t really comment on how accurately it follows the novel, but it works exceptionally well on its own merits anyway.
The basic premise is the same – mind states stored in a disc at the top of the spine mean that personalities can be moved between bodies, clones and synthetic beings, as well as being stored and transmitted interstellar distances. In order to keep the rest of the setting to a manageable level, this technology was left behind by an alien civilisation, so everything else is your basic cyberpunk milieu.
The actual story is complex, needing all ten episodes to fully explore it, and needing extended flashbacks. These are all handled well, as is the inevitable “body swapping” we are never more confused about who is who than the writers want us to be, and that does lead to some of the few comedic moments. All the acting was good, the AI character Poe was especially likeable, and I do hope that he’s backed up somewhere for the second season.
Lot of sex, extreme violence, and injury detail, but it does stay on the right side of being gratuitous, as does the extensive nudity, the story is about the depravity (sexual and otherwise) of near-immortal “meths” who have lived for hundreds of years and seek out ever more extreme experiences.
As always with big budget streaming shows, the production values were very high, great sets, impressive special effects, and much effort put into costumes and set dressing.
Altogether a great piece of television, well deserving of its second series and a reminder to add the novel to my science fiction hall of fame shelf soon.