麻豆传媒

TV

Altered Carbon

Netflix

THE first season of Altered Carbon was highly imperfect, but it was a whole lot of fun and gorgeous to look at. Now it鈥檚 back鈥� although somewhat altered. Altered Altered Carbon, if you will.

Based on an 18-year-old book by Richard K. Morgan, season one began with the tale of a super-soldier turned terrorist who wakes up, screaming and thrashing, in a new body. New to him, anyway.

The central premise of the show is that in the future, people鈥檚 identities are stored in a chip of alien metal in the back of their neck. That chip can be transferred between bodies, or 鈥渟leeves鈥� as they are known. We are told that sleeves are in short supply, although rich people 鈥� and indeed every character in the show who needs one for plot purposes 鈥� find them easy enough to acquire.

So, back to our hero, Takeshi Kovacs. He is mostly played by Joel Kinnaman (who also stars in For All Mankind), but in flashbacks, he appears in his original sleeve played by Will Yun Lee.

Kovacs finds himself rudely awakened in a world that looks almost exactly like Blade Runner. He is told he has been resurrected, like it or lump it, to help a very rich man called Laurens Bancroft, played by James Purefoy.

鈥淪eason one unfolds as a sort of very violent locked-room mystery, but with multiple identity twists鈥�

Bancroft has been murdered, in body if not in chip, but he can鈥檛 work out how the deed was done. He believes that Kovacs, with his near-magical 鈥渆nvoy training鈥� (don鈥檛 ask), will be able to find answers where others can鈥檛.

Season one then unfolds as a sort of very violent locked-room mystery, but with multiple identity twists and a swirling secondary mystery surrounding Kovacs鈥檚 terrorist past, his sister and the fate of his long-lost mentor/lover Quellcrist Falconer, played by Ren茅e Elise Goldsberry.

Added to all this we get two genuinely moving relationships, the first a romantic one between Kovacs and a local police officer, and the second a comradeship between Kovacs and his hotel manager, who happens to be an AI. In short: What wasn鈥檛 to like? Season two though鈥�

The sleeve premise cleverly lets the show continue with different actors, and so this time Kovacs is reborn in a sleeve looking just like Anthony Mackie, formerly of the Avengers series. Mackie certainly looks like he can hold his own in a fight, which is a central plank of the Kovacs identity. Sadly, though, in this new sleeve, the lighter elements of his personality seem to have been shorn away.

Perhaps we are to conclude that the many years that have passed as he searched for his beloved Falconer have altered him forever? Where before he was quite a jovial assassin, with a twinkle in his eye 鈥� someone you might have a drink with 鈥� now Kovacs is earnestness itself. You can imagine feeling pretty desperate if you got trapped in a corner with him at a party.

He can still fight, for sure, but the humour is all gone, replaced with seriousness, desperation and muted anxiety. The fun is no more. Even our hotelier AI friend, Poe (played by Chris Conner), who was formerly good for a few laughs, is now largely all gloom.

The show, in its new earnest form, jogs along swiftly enough, although not always in a particularly believable direction, and there is at least an alien subplot. But I do hope that season three, if there is one, recovers some of season one鈥檚 high spirits.