10 Most Disappointing TV Shows Of 2018

3. Altered Carbon

At the beginning of the year, Altered Carbon looked set to become Netflix's first major sci-fi success. With a major budget, an acclaimed novel to draw from, and Miguel Sapochnik directing the first episode, the tools were there for this to be a big, buzzy series. It just didn't know how to use them.

Sapochnik and the rest of the crew did succeed in creating one key element of the show: it looked incredible. With its cyberpunk visuals, this was the kind of lived-in, futuristic feast for the eyes that wouldn't look out of place on the big screen. It was everything else that was the problem.

With uneven pacing, a wooden lead performance from Joel Kinnaman, and some bad writing (the other showrunner was Terminator Genisys' Laeta Kalogridis) the series didn't have much inside its admittedly gorgeous packaging. Although ambitious, it bashes through themes of race and sexual violence like a sledgehammer, its grand philosophical questions remain surface-deep, and more than anything the story just becomes rather dull. Still, there's greater hope for Season 2, which will have the more charismatic Anthony Mackie in the lead role.