Altered Carbon Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs

1. It's Bloated & Convoluted At Times

In the show's defense, it is full of complex and heady concepts, and to a point it wants to intentionally confuse the audience, because this suits the show's themes of ambiguous identity and distrust.

However, there are definitely times where the layout of scenes, ideas and information feels sloppier than it really needs to be. Keeping track of everything isn't easy because there's an excess of subplots, many of which appear and disappear on a whim and ultimately don't have satisfactory payoffs.

There's also a lot of breadcrumb-following detective work once the central premise is established, and with its 10-episode running order, it probably could've lost two-or-so episodes to make it feel a little less distended, as is a common criticism of Netflix Original shows.

Altered Carbon is good enough to stick it out regardless, but the messy writing often thinks it's being clever and complex when it's more convoluted and willfully obtuse than anything.

With these cons in mind, here's everything the show got right...