Task Review: Mare of Easttown Creator Returns to HBO With a Compelling, Character-Driven Crime Thriller

It takes almost five minutes before Task hits its first line of dialogue, but by the time it arrives the miniseries has already revealed much about its two focal characters via a montage that follows each through what appears to be a typical day in their lives. Tom (Mark Ruffalo) wakes up to the sounds of birds, attempts to pray but can't quite seem to remember how to hold his hands, then dips his face in ice water to face the day. Robbie (Tom Pelphrey) wakes up, tenderly removes a small child from his bed, then, like Tom, heads to work. Tom sits behind a career fair desk to answer questions about jobs at the FBI. Robbie makes the rounds as a sanitation worker. At night, Tom drinks vodka from an oversized Phillies cup as he falls asleep listening to the ballgame. Robbie and his coworker Cliff (Raúl Castillo) scope out a house that attracted their notice while they made their rounds, one whose garbage suggests they're in the drug trade. Then the day ends.

These are the broad strokes. The details will come later. But while it's obvious that Tom and Robbie are on opposite sides of the law, they also both appear to have a lot in common. It's not that Task is doing anything as simple as drawing a moral equivalence between the two characters. Some of Robbie's actions will quickly close off that possibility. But the show immediately establishes both Robbie and Tom as men doing their best to get by under trying circumstances. Whatever happens next, this has to be kept in mind. At heart, this is who these guys are.

What happens next happens slowly, much to the show's benefit. Creator Brad Ingelsby has built the show around a compelling narrative involving drugs and biker gangs operating on the outer fringes of the greater Philadelphia region (already a hotbed for such activity on TV this year thanks to Dope Thief), one with no shortage of double crosses and conflicted loyalties. But it's just as much about the lives of those caught up in that story, the complicated paths that brought them together, and the hopes they hold for the future once the trouble dies down.

8.5

Task

at HBO

Like

• The first-rate performances
• Compelling narrative

Dislike

• A few supporting characters are too intriguing for their limited screen time

Tom, for instance, didn't always want to man a career fair booth. He was an active agent and before that a priest. It was his wife who led to both changes of duty. His love for her inspired him to abandon his vows, and her death, under awful circumstances, put him on leave from active duty. He's called back prematurely, however, due to a string of robberies of drug dealers committed by a group of masked criminals who seemingly seem to know what houses to hit and when. That's, of course, Robbie and Cliff (and, for a while, a third thief named Peaches played by Owen Teague). Tom's investigation seems destined to bring his life and Robbie's together.

This takes a while, however, even after Tom assembles a task force by recruiting three other law enforcement officers: the by-the-books Aleah (Thuso Mbedu), the brash Anthony (Fabien Frankel), and Lizzie (Alison Oliver), whose apparent flakiness belies some solid investigative instincts. In the meantime, Task reveals the events that brought Tom to his current state in part via conversations with his daughter, Emily (Silvia Dionicio), about preparing a family statement tied to her mother's death. Death haunts Robbie as well. He's brought his family to live in the home he now shares with his niece Maeve (Emilia Jones), a young twentysomething who's been burdened with responsibilities she never asked for, and sadness she never expected to bear, after the death of her father. 

ALSO READ: The most anticipated shows coming this fall

Filled with memorable characters (the supporting cast includes Martha Plimpton and Isaach de Bankolé, among others, and features a terrifying turn from Jamie McShane as the leader of a biker gang), Task shares with Ingelsby's Mare of Easttown a strong sense of place. But where Mare was at least partly about the ties that bound its protagonist to the place she was born, Task's focal characters both appear to be on the verge of losing such connections. Tom barely talks to anyone, and his drinking has gotten to the point where Emily sometimes has to help him to bed. Robbie and Maeve live in a near-constant state of conflict. Even before the real danger arrives, both characters appear on the verge of losing what's left of the lives they've created for themselves and their families.

Nothing in Task's seven episodes makes those lives easier. The miniseries slowly ramps up the intensity as Robbie and Cliff's home invasion scheme takes a bad turn and Tom comes to question the abilities, and perhaps the integrity, of his own team, and the leisurely pace of the first episode gives way to a sense that a dire fate could await seemingly any character at any moment. That occasionally proves true. Task features subplots that manifest and resolve in unexpected ways. But as strong as it is as a crime thriller, it's even better as a study of the lives at its core, thanks to remarkable work from Ruffalo and Pelphrey. Both bring sensitivity and tenderness to characters whose circumstance would make it easy for them to surrender to hardness and despair. Avoiding that, Task makes clear, is a different kind of fight.

Premieres: Sunday, Sept. 7 at 9/8c on HBO, with new episodes released weekly
Who's in it: Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey
Who's behind it: Brad Inglesby
For fans of: Character-driven crime stories, generally; Mare of Easttown, specifically
How many episodes we watched: 7 of 7