The 25 best Netflix series ever made, ranked worst to first

Altered Carbon / Image Credit: Netflix

17. Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon is a dystopian sci-fi series that is based on the novel by Richard K. Morgan. The series takes place 360 years in the future in a future version of San Francisco called Bay City.

The idea of this Netflix original series is that a person’s memories are placed into a disk called a cortical stack that is implanted in the back of a person’s neck. They are alien designed and are meant to allow some people to theoretically live forever.

Basically, human bodies are known as “sleeves” are used to transfer the cortical stack to after death to allow a person to continue their life in a new body. The only way to really kill someone is to destroy their cortical stack.

The first season of Altered Carbon sees a former mercenary (Joel Kinnaman) have his stack pulled out of prison after 250 years by one of the richest men in the world (James Purefoy) and placed into a new sleeve.

The reason is that someone killed the wealthy man and he wants to hire the merc to find out who did it.

The show wears its cyberpunk influence on its sleeves and is never boring, with an amazing world built for fans to lose themselves in.

Because the cortical stack is placed into new bodies, it meant that Netflix could bring back Altered Carbon for a second season and allow them to recast the lead, which they did with Anthony Mackie (Falcon from the Marvel Cinematic Universe).