I enjoy a lot of Science Fiction, or as it is traditionally (and should always be known as) - speculative fiction. I have recently managed to find the time to sit down and watch Altered Carbon on Netflix, and I'd like to colour myself pretty impressed.
Not only is Altered Carbon a visual delight, (especially on a 4K HDR compatible device) - but its dialogue, and in particular, its monologues are written in an excellent manner.
In Altered Carbon the human consciousness can be downloaded onto a "stack", which is known as Digital Human Freight, also DHF. This disc, inserted into the brain of citizens of the protectorate when they're just a wee babe of a single year, allows for the human consciousness to be transferred to another body, otherwise known as a "Sleeve".
There's organic, natural born sleeves, conceived in the traditional manner, then there's synthetics, made of silicon and other parts. It's all ludicrously expensive and managed by a group of social, economic, and generally everything-else elites, known as the "Meths" Methuselah - after the biblical figure that lived for hundreds of years.
Following Takeshi Kovacs, the story unfolds with death, violence, political intrigue, and classic "Sci-Fi cop meets web of lies" plot, which is a perfect introduction to a foreign, solidly built world, with enough atmosphere to keep anyone engrossed. You'll be pleased to also know that this isn't a back of the envelope sort of TV series, with the plot being based on a series of books written by Richard Morgan.
The Netflix series has a lot of visceral content - with the violence, choreographed gun play, and puddles of bloods turning into rivers very quickly. This is a dark, consequence-less world for a lot of the characters that are followed, which leads to an enormous amount of murder and collateral damage.
This isn't the most interesting part of the series, however; and I imagine that there are many elements of the novels left untouched in the series - there's also some elements of the world building which are left untouched, completely. The ability to "needlecast" - move from one "Sleeve" to another body, in another location - and the associated hangover (or sleeve sickness) from moving to another body isn't explored in adequate depth on screen to make this a risk which it is suggested to be.
There's a lot more to explore with this series than the colour, sound, and direct words spoken by the characters to one another. There's so much subtext and suggestion, leading to a truly polynomial story, with interesting "side-stories", and an entire world of "before this all happened" left to explore in lush, vibrant flashback scenes, in opposition to the contrast riddled and very intentionally HDR modern, noisy world Altered Carbon presents.
If you're into Science Fiction, or Speculative Fiction (as I'm adamant it should all be) and seeing just one of the answers to "what if", then schedule out about 11 hours, and sit down and watch the whole lot.