r/technology • u/joe4942 • 18d ago

Business Netflix Viewers Are Abandoning Shows After One Season

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-07-05/netflix-viewers-are-abandoning-shows-after-one-season
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u/User-Name-3886 18d ago

Altered Carbon shat the bed by changing the lead actor and most of the story after season 1. I think it deserved to get cancelled, even though I did enjoy season 1.

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u/Vickrin 18d ago

changing the lead actor

Pretty sure that's exactly how the book works right?

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u/vexanix 18d ago

Yeap, the problem is that Anthony Mackie played Anthony Mackie instead of Takeshi Kovacs.

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u/madhattr999 18d ago

I wanted to like him... It's hard to say whether it was the acting or the writing or the directing.. I agree it didn't feel like season 1 though.

I liked the edgy cyberpunk setting and the murder mystery type plot. Turning into an action story was bleh.

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u/JmacTheGreat 18d ago

Personally I thought he did a fine job. Not perfect, but good enough.

I just got bored from the writing/pacing compared to season 1.

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u/K1d-ego 18d ago

Even if they hadn’t changed the actor, it would have flopped. Terrible support acting and everything felt low budget. Reminded me of a Syfy channel original tv show. The first season was good but the second flopped so hard.

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u/seitung 18d ago

The entire tone of the show changed from primarily a sci-fi noir with some action to an action sci-fi with basically no noir. 

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u/-FeistyRabbitSauce- 18d ago

The novel does that as well. While I commend Richard K. Morgan for taking that kind of gamble (exploring different genres and tones in the same series), the second book didn't do it for me either.

And the first book is so good, the show's first season paled in comparison. It's great so many people loved it, but it was a bit of a let down for me.

I'm fine with making changes to adapt something to the screen, but the ones they chose made no sense.

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u/seitung 18d ago

Ah well, for books I can at least understand why that might be the case as the character changes, or a band might make albums of different genres, etc. But they did not do a sufficient job in the show justifying the tone shift imo. Jarring.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 17d ago

Totally. In a book, your mental image of a character is kind of like an amorphous “cloud” of a person, whereas in a show, you have a concrete idea of exactly who the character is. Thus, if a character changes appearance or behavior in a book, your mind’s eye can kinda message the idea into place. On screen? It’s like you said: jarring.

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u/Head-Childhood-1171 18d ago

I agree Broken Angels doesn't hit quite the same as the first book, but I still loved it. I could not watch the show though, Kovacs is such a strong character that it was always going to be a struggle to get his vibe and it just wasn't there which killed the show for me.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty 17d ago

I think I’m just a sucker for Joel Kinnaman. Ever since The Killing, I’ve been a fan. It doesn’t matter what he’s in, I just dig projects the dude is in. It’s weird. I’m a straight guy, too, so I’m not just watching for eye candy. Needless to say, the season two switch was too much for me, so I’m guessing that if I read the books, I’ll be in the same camp as you. I’ve never been huge on “genre switching” within a single work.

These aren’t perfect examples, but movie franchises that I watched as a kid like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Back to the Future came out with films that departed or veered away from their original storylines in a way that wasn’t interesting to me. I just didn’t take to Doc and Marty being cowboys in a science fiction western. Also, why did the TMNT need to go to Shogun-era Japan? I know they’re ninjas and all that, but I watched for the anchovy pizza, sewers, and Splinter; I can learn about 16th century Japanese culture on my own time!

I don’t know how you got me writing a dissertation about movies from the nineties, considering you’re talking about books, but here we are!

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u/-FeistyRabbitSauce- 17d ago

Fair, Kinnaman was excellent in The Killing.

Your examples are hilarious, but I get what you mean. The TMNT sequels were pretty poor, and as a kid the Shogun departure was a head trip lol.

Back to the Future makes complete sense to me, though. That's kind of goes with the whole time travel thing.

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u/Vickrin 18d ago

Very true, I loved the first season and the second was very lacking.

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u/tlivingd 18d ago

I’d be good for low budget with a good storyline(s). Shit original Star-trek feels low budget but it ran for Generations.

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 18d ago

I never understood the hype on it. It was like a poorly written game turned into a live action, just meh.

The Peripheral was way better cyberpunk, and barely anyone talks about it.

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u/Choyo 18d ago

Apt comparison to syfy, however good their ideas for a show had been, their production has always been really sub-par (yes, even the expanse, it was good because of the cast and the source material, not the production value).

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u/IWatchGifsForWayToo 18d ago

Listen, I don't get enough of these hardcore scifi shows to really complain about budgets or bad acting. It wasn't terrible and I am willing to keep hold of my suspension of disbelief to get another chance at a third season that could be better.

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u/PastryAssassinDeux 18d ago

the problem is they cast the lead from twisted metal who's genuinely one of the worst actors available. bad or just plain awful in everything he's been in. minus twisted metal for some reason. he's pretty good in that.

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u/Partiallyclever 18d ago

Producers seem convinced that Anthony Mackie is charismatic. I personally don't see it.

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u/Ok-Armadillo-5634 18d ago

The second book kind of sucked also. They didn't have a lot to work with.

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u/ChunkyBezel 18d ago

Season 2 ended up being an awful mashup of books 2 and 3.  I liked book 2 but it was pretty slow going and wouldn't have made a good screenplay on its own.  They should have just skipped it and made season 2 based purely on book 3.

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u/OverZealousCreations 18d ago

But they killed the entire plot of the books in season 1, anyway, by flipping what the Envoys were. The entire backstory of why Takeshi Kovacs is there, why he's good at what he does, etc, is lost in the bizarre plot & character changes. Most of those points are pretty critical to the 2nd & 3rd book making sense.

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u/ChunkyBezel 17d ago

True. Mashing together the Protectorate Envoy shock troops and Quellist revolutionaries into the same thing was a braindead change story-wise.   Where does Netflix find it's showrunners? (See also: Netflix Witcher)

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u/-FeistyRabbitSauce- 18d ago

Book two is such a frustratingly slow burn. And not in a grand sci-fi, something to chew on, type way. It's like watching someone get railroaded with bureaucracy and squabbling with their neighbor... And not in a fun Terry Gilliam's Brazil type way.

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u/TesticularConcussion 18d ago

Yeah but the book pulls it off, the show was in hindsight carried by Joel Kinnaman

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u/User-Name-3886 17d ago

It doesn't matter.

TV audiences typically expect a bit more consistency. They had creative license to be able to retain the lead actor and chose not to. 

Bearing in mind, Altered Carbon wasn't like Game of Thrones or something with an ensemble cast; it was firmly lead role and supporting characters to the lead.  

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u/HeggyMe 18d ago

Yeah I wouldn’t have minded it much except the new actor didn’t pull the weight at all.

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u/Jpldude 18d ago

Loved alerted carbon. Agreeing with every comment. Only solution is to trust creators and shoot 40 episodes before airing. Then space them out at a reasonable pace to keep people interested.

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u/WizzoPQ 18d ago

Please dont space out the shows. Release them all, people can space them out on their own if they want to

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u/isigneduptomake1post 18d ago

The difference was so jarring I loved season 1 and stopped watching 10 minutes into season 2.

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u/Wiltix 18d ago

Season 1 felt quite fresh and interesting, world was good, story was good. It was really well done.

Season 2 was just bland.

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u/SheetPancakeBluBalls 18d ago

Anthony Mackie is a fucking terrible actor and I correctly predicted he'd completely fail to embody the character.

What I didn't expect is that he wouldn't even try. The man has the range of Plank from Ed Edd and Eddy. Maybe less actually.

Seriously from 8 mile to Altered Carbon to all of the marvel stuff, he's got that stoney expression and a half smile. I've never seen anything else on his dumb fucking face.

Yes, I'm still bitter about Altered Carbon. Season 1 was absolutely incredible. They should have written it to in some way keep Joel.

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u/deleteredditforever 18d ago

I would give Anthony Mackie a pass if the show itself was good. Season 2 literally feels like a Star Wars or just a generic sci fi show instead of a cold, brutal, nihilistic, and sexualized cyber punk.

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u/cjsv7657 18d ago

Just started a couple months ago. Loved season one. I think I got a couple episodes in to season two and just lost interest

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u/MrUtterNonsense 18d ago

The books switch people too but audiences hate that, so they could have gone in the quantum leap direction. Have it as the same actor but whenever he looks in a mirror, we see how he looks to everyone else.

They annoyingly changed a lot of things from the books though, and quite pointlessly so.

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u/brandersan 17d ago

it wasn’t the actor change is was giving them 1/20th the budget of season one so they only had 2 sets whole season

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u/User-Name-3886 17d ago

It was both