While there are plenty of promising cyberpunk streaming shows on the way, one underrated Netflix series brought the sci-fi subgenre to the screen before mainstream viewers were ready. There is no shortage of interesting sci-fi on streaming right now, and there’s something for everyone among the genre’s recent offerings. For viewers intrigued by aliens, there is Apple TV’s drama thriller Invasion, while the same streaming service’s Foundation is a perfect watch for fans of immersive space operas.

Viewers who prefer a dystopian story need look no further than Apple TV’s Hugh Howey adaptation Silo, Hulu’s Paradise, or the same streaming service’s six-season Margaret Atwood adaptation The Handmaid’s Tale. The latter was so successful that it spawned a spinoff in the form of 2025’s equally acclaimed The Testaments. Sadly, even as the sci-fi streaming landscape has developed at a rapid pace in recent years, there are a few niches within the genre that remain under-explored.

Even though works like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner are universally viewed as masterpieces by sci-fi fans and critics alike, cyberpunk in general has had a hard time making the move to the small screen. 2026 and 2027 will see the arrival of Prime Video’s Blade Runner: 2099 and Apple TV’s long-awaited adaptation of author William Gibson’s seminal 1984 novel Neuromancer, but one of the best cyberpunk shows so far was canceled after a mere two seasons. That series was Netflix’s criminally underrated Altered Carbon.

Altered Carbon Was One of the First Great Cyberpunk Streaming Shows

Adapted from the acclaimed 2002 novel of the same name by author Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon tells the story of a soldier, Takeshi Kovacs, who is released from a high-tech prison in exchange for solving the murder of a powerful elite, Meth Laurens Bancroft. However, since the series is set 360 years into the future, things aren’t so simple for Kovacs. The person who gets the former soldier released is Bancroft himself, who has survived his murder via “Resleeving.”

In the world of Altered Carbon, the rich and powerful can prolong their lives thanks to this experimental procedure, which allows them to move their minds from one body to another. This means characters in the series can change their faces between episodes and seasons, and it is not a major spoiler to say that even some of the most important protagonists of the series resleeve during Altered Carbon’s 18-episode, two-season story.

While Altered Carbon borrows from Paul Verhoeven and Ridley Scott in equal measure, this ingenious premise means the show feels like much more than a mere retread of ideas already seen in the Robocop movies and the Blade Runner franchise. As fascinating as Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Gibson’s aforementioned Neuormancer are, Morgan’s story adds something new to the cyberpunk canon.

Cyberpunk’s Recent Resurgence Makes Altered Carbon’s Early Cancellation Worse

Sadly, while the cast of Altered Carbon are universally superb and the show uses the concept of resleeving to allow various actors to play the same role as different stages of the story, the series didn’t last long enough to explore its fictional world in depth. The same was true for Prime Video’s 2022 Gibson adaptation The Peripheral, which set up a fascinating, ambiitious premise, only to be canceled after a mere eight episodes.

The recent resurgence of the cyberpunk subgenre on streaming has only made this more unfortunate, as it is now clearer than ever that Altered Carbon was ahead of its time. The show explored the cyberpunk subgenre’s trademark uneasy merging of technology, minds, and bodies with its gripping, trippy premise, but Netflix’s Altered Carbon arrived too soon to cash in on the popularity of cyberpunk and ended too early as a result.

Release Date

2018 – 2020-00-00

Network

Netflix

Directors

Alex Graves, Ciaran Donnelly, M.J. Bassett, Nick Hurran, Peter Hoar, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Uta Briesewitz, Jeremy Webb, Andy Goddard, Miguel Sapochnik

Writers

Brian Nelson, Garrett Lerner, Russel Friend, Steve Blackman, Adam Lash, Laeta Kalogridis, Nevin Densham, Alison Schapker