I am NOT a fan of science fiction, which Altered Carbon is, but I thoroughly enjoyed season one. The main actor was fantastic, the concept was interesting, the images were beautifully done and were a feast for your imagination combining both futuristic concepts while still incorporating retro ideas and images, and the script was such that you were rooting for the protagonist. I loved the idea of the Raven hotel with its Poe A.I. host. Having the A.I./human hate to friendship allowed for some nice growth over the season. Some of the rich vs poor social commentary was interesting and not as trite or black and white as you would expect. This had a everyone roots for the underdog vibe from the get go. I liked that they didn't insult the audience by explaining everything from the onset, it gave your mind things to puzzle out, which kept you engaged.
Watch season one, you will not be sorry...even if you are not a sci-fi fan. My 7/10 rating is for season one only...you can stop watching at the end of season one and you will have a nice complete story. (I really wish I had stopped here.)
Season Two-
If I were rating season two I would give it one star, but only because you can't give negative ratings on IMDb. This was one of the worst things I have seen in the last couple of years and it was particularly disappointing because season one was so good. It really left a bitter taste in your mouth and has tainted to a certain degree how I feel about Altered Carbon all together. The show runners made some horrible choices of actors for season two, I think they were more concerned about checking boxes than actually delivering good content to their audience...which is a shame because they could have probably checked some of those same boxes by making some different choices and delivered a solid good quality show. Instead there was horrible and horribly delivered lines/dialogue by some pretty terrible actors...and clearly not as much energy was put in to plot/story development. The story was not engaging or entertaining...it was a snooze-fest. It also lacked new and interesting images...it didn't even keep the interesting images from season one (which shouldn't have cost them any more money to re-use!). The only thing that I liked from season one that they kept was our hotel Raven...but our poor Poe A.I. Is messed up. The only small glimmer of hope and microscopic light was found in our newly introduced archeologist A.I., but they managed to sour that before the end of season two as well.
Please, please do not watch season two. Friends don't let friends watch season two!
