One of the best elements of the 2009-2015 crime/action series White Collar was the late Willie Garson as Moz. And Moz’s best episode featured his backstory as the dreaded crime boss, the “Dentist of Detroit,” a partially mythical mercenary you’d never want to meet in person. Casting Woody Harrelson as a similar character was an inspired choice for this year’s direct-to-Netflix movie, The Man from Toronto. Pair Harrelson with the current funniest funnyman at the movies, Kevin Hart, and you have the makings of a summer hit. Add the year’s best cinema action sequences, and you have an action movie you can’t miss. Oddly enough, it’s also the year’s best Jason Statham movie–without Jason Statham.
The first season of Netflix’s Altered Carbon was a fantastic sci-fi series with a stellar cast and a story and production values that rivaled the original Blade Runner and its 2017 sequel. Based on Richard K. Morgan’s novels, the series is centered around Takeshi Kovacs, a future soldier in a world where science has developed a hard drive called a “stack” that is implanted in humans’ necks, allowing our memories to be uploaded to storage and replanted over and over so they seemingly can live forever, even in new bodies. That conceit allows Kovacs and other characters to be played by any number of actors, which, as demonstrated in Season 2, can allow the series to continue indefinitely much as Doctor Who’s regeneration mechanism allows replacement Doctors. So how does a series fair when it replaces the lead after the first season? Can it keep up the intrigue and interest for viewers?
The first season asked: What does it mean to be human, and how much can you shed away and replace with technology and still retain the “self”? Unfortunately, the second season falls a bit short. Although it wisely was paired down from ten to eight episodes for its second season (season one couldn’t keep up the action and would have benefited from some good editing), the series just doesn’t capture the same magic. Anthony Mackie′s assumption of the role of Kovacs in the year 2385, years after the events of the first season, is more of a re-hash of what we saw Joel Kinnaman do with the character last season. Mackie is usually one of the best parts of any project he tackles (The Adjustment Bureau, Captain America: Winter Soldier), but the story and dialogue here are not as sophisticated as in the inaugural effort, and Mackie is always intense, his acting dialed up to eleven, much different than his character in the first season. Simone Missick, who we loved in Marvel’s Luke Cage, provides an interesting new cyborg character for the Altered Carbon universe as Trepp, but it didn’t quite catch up to the passion of Martha Higareda’s driven cop Kristin Ortega last season. But where the series shines is in its supporting cast of characters, many returning from last season. The result is like comparing the first season of the Battlestar Galactica reboot with the last–good television–even if it’s not as gritty and exciting as the first season, it still may be the best sci-fi series on television this year.
Foremost is Chris Conner back as the artificial intelligence who has taken inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe, a bodyguard of sorts looking out for Kovacs (Mackie) in his new body (called a sleeve). Conner brings to the series the same kind of compelling look at the trouble of incorporating humanity into robots or cyber-creations, the same type of battle of sentience in the non-living as conveyed by Robert Picardo as the emergency medical hologram in Star Trek Voyager. In this season Poe is in trouble–his matrix is broken and he needs to reboot, which he does not want to do because that would mean he would forget Lizzie (Hayley Law), a key character of last season, and a memory stored in his digital mind. Not rebooting means he makes mistakes that could hinder Kovacs’s ability to stay hidden from his pursuers. But there is hope for Poe, and that comes in the form of another creation, another artificial intelligence, an ancient storage “archaeologue” unit called Dig 301, played by Dina Shihabi, who nicely substitutes as a futuristic love interest for Poe.
Last week we previewed a teaser for the coming second season of Netflix’s Altered Carbon, and we now have a full trailer from the streaming provider showing us even more. The new trailer confirms the near wipe-out of the main cast from the first season, with only the artificial intelligence named Poe remaining, played by Chris Conner(Burn Notice, House, Bones) and a new kind of robot. Two supporting characters clearly get a bigger role this season: Renee Goldsberry (Star Trek Enterprise, Life on Mars) as Falconer, a platoon leader from the past, and the original form of the series lead, played by Will Yun Lee(Hawaii Five-O, Bionic Woman, Witchblade). It’s too bad for those who thought cop Kristin Ortega, played by Mexican actress Martha Higareda(McFarland USA, Royal Pains), was the highlight of the series–she and first season lead Joel Kinnaman(RoboCop, Suicide Squad) seem to be out this time.
In fact other than Poe the new trailer appears like Season Two could easily be an entirely new sci-fi series. Alison Schapker is the new series executive producer and showrunner. Anthony Mackie(Captain America: Winter Soldier, The Adjustment Bureau) is in the driver’s seat as the new “sleeve” or body inhabited by Takeshi Kovacs, hero of the Richard K. Morgan novel the show is based on. Kovacs is a future soldier in a world where science has developed a hard drive called a “stack” that is implanted in humans’ necks, enabling our memories to be uploaded to storage and replanted over and over so we seemingly can live forever, even in new bodies (see our review of the first season here). Allowing Kovacs and other characters to be played by any number of actors (so the series could potentially run forever like Doctor Who) for the second season will be something new for many Netflix viewers.
Season Two begins thirty years after the last episode, with Kovacs continuing his search for Falconer (explaining why so many first season characters are no longer around). New to the series, and highlighted in this trailer, are Simone Missick(Marvel’s Luke Cage, The Defenders) as Trepp, Lela Loren(Chuck, Lost) as Governor Danica Harlan, and Torben Liebrecht(Homeland, Luther) as Colonel Carrera, with James Saito(Prodigal Son, Law & Order) as Tanaseda Hidecki.
Check it out the new poster (above) and this new trailer:
