Altered Carbon Season 2 Review: 5 Ups & 5 Downs
An inconsistent second season for Netflix's sci-fi romp.
After an agonising two-year wait, the second season of mega-budget sci-fi series Altered Carbon has finally dropped on Netflix - though given their baffling lack of marketing, you'd hardly know it.
The first season received much attention for its unique genre premise and undeniably blockbuster-caliber production values, even if many ultimately felt that the series didn't quite realise the full potential of Richard K. Morgan's 2002 source novel.
Season two effectively acts as a soft-reboot for the show, with protagonist Takeshi Kovacs once again being re-sleeved, this time with Anthony Mackie taking over the lead role from solid forebear Joel Kinnaman.
It's a transition that's mostly effortless, yet while the show retains most of the first season's lavish wow-factor, it's still the storytelling that's in desperate need of greater nuance and clarity.
Though this new season gets plenty right, it doesn't quite feel like the decisive improvement that many pre-release reviews have hailed it as, but rather a consistent follow-up that largely retains the same positives and negatives...