As Colonel Carrera takes charge of the Bancroft case, Kovacs sets out to find Axley’s bounty hunter.

After a rather exposition-packed set-up opening episode, Altered Carbon’s second season settles in to an easier to digest action thriller hour, with Anthony Mackie’s Kovacs on the trail of bounty hunters and ultimately to find long lost lover Quell.

In the opening scene we witness the full force of a crack Protectorate squad led by Colonel Carrera (Torben Leibrecht), cleansing a crime scene to meet their political needs. This wolf-enhanced pack of super soldiers are looking for a missing ‘sleeve’, and we can guess who is currently wearing it.

Kovacs’ companion Poe keeps glitching and is need of a reboot, those this would likely lead to him losing his memories, while Kovacs is otherwise occupied seeking the bounty hunter who has been on his trail, reaching Trepp (Simone Missick) at his fifth attempt.

Verdict: It’s all good, flashy and violent fun, though some of the peripheral characters are still thinly sketched (I wonder if they’ll ever be fully formed) with conspirators dealing and double dealing their hidden agendas. There’s definitely more momentum on show than at the end of episode 1. 7/10

Nick Joy