Four years after Kate Winslet got a nation to fall in love with the most unpleasant accent the United States has ever produced, Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby returns to Philadelphia’s collar counties with Task, a new seven-episode HBO series about a law enforcement officer trying to solve a thorny case while reeling from a personal loss. Mark Ruffalo’s Tom Brandis isn’t a washed-up high school basketball star, but a former Catholic priest, and his son isn’t dead, but he is in jail, for a crime whose precise nature takes a few episodes to become clear. But there’s no mistaking that the shows take place in the same universe. When Ruffalo’s FBI agent, who’s stepped back from investigative work to nurse his wounds, shows up at a job fair looking for new recruits, you can see the Easttown PD set up at a nearby table.
The simultaneous success of Mare and Abbott Elementary has given rise to an unprecedented wave of shows set in and around Philadelphia, including Netflix’s The Madness, Hulu’s Deli Boys, Apple TV+’s Dope Thief, and Peacock’s Long Bright River, prompting an unofficial arms race in regional specificity. In Long Bright River, adapted from the novel by Temple professor Liz Moore, it’s not enough that the grandfather of Amanda Seyfried’s beat cop tends bar in a Mummers clubhouse; the series devotes an entire scene to him telling his great-grandson about the legendary local DJ Jerry Blavat. Perhaps mindful of how the terrain has shifted, Ingelsby squeezes references to scrapple, water ice, and shopping at the Acme into Task’s first 30 seconds of dialogue. Before that, though, there’s four minutes of wordless action, a lyrical opening montage that gives us a chance to connect with the characters before they open their mouths. Overall, Task feels less insistent on establishing a sense of place and more confident that audiences can find their way around, not to mention less anxious that viewers will click away the first time Tom Pelphrey’s Delaware County garbageman says the word “online.” But without the novelty of that local (or should it be lowcal) flavor, the series sometimes feels at pains to flesh out the world it inhabits.
Ruffalo’s Tom shares Task’s opening sequence with Pelphrey’s Robbie, as both men rise and greet the day—Tom with groggy reluctance, Robbie with a sense of possibility and purpose. But it turns out Robbie isn’t just a go-getter, or a dreamer who starts one dating-app interaction with “I strongly believe people come into people’s lives for a reason.” He’s a thief, using his day job to scout drug houses and confirm his suspicions by rooting through their trash for extra-large bottles of quinine used for cutting opiates. He and his buddy Cliff (Raúl Castillo) have taken down half a dozen or so, drawing the attention of both the FBI and the Dark Hearts, the biker gang that controls the market in rural Pennsylvania.
The string of small-time robberies isn’t considered a top priority by the FBI, which is made clear by the fact that they put Tom on the case, and more so by the low-wattage task force assembled to help him out, a combination of raw rookies and undistinguished clock-punchers. But as unenthused as he is about the assignment—he’d rather be home, chugging vodka from a giant Phillies cup—Tom puts his back into it, scrubbing down the stairs of a filthy, recently confiscated stash house while Robbie and his buddies celebrate their most recent robbery. He may have given up the priesthood, but he hasn’t lost his taste for penance, even if he’s no longer sure there’s any reward waiting for him after he’s done.
Ingelsby, who wrote all of Task’s seven episodes (he shares story credit on three with Easttown’s real-life chief of police, David Obzud), keeps laying on the parallels between Robbie and Tom. Both are struggling with grief, both feuding with younger women—Tom’s teenage daughter, Emily (Silvia Dionicio), Robbie’s adult niece, Maeve (Emilia Jones)—who have had just about enough of their crap. But Tom has more or less accepted that the world has nothing better to offer him, while Robbie, who has two little kids of his own, refuses to yield to the obstacles placed in his way, even if ripping off the Dark Hearts’ drug shipments risks touching off a bloody gang war.
Naturally, one of Robbie’s heists goes sideways, and what was a string of victimless crimes starts piling up a body count. Before long we’re in the middle of a biker drama as well, with the Dark Hearts’ elder statesman, Perry (Jamie McShane), trying to prevent his protégé, Jayson (Sam Keeley), from leading the club into dangerous territory. It’s at this point that it starts to feel like Task could use a little pulp to help its gears turn more smoothly—that it could be, if not necessarily more upbeat, at least a little more fun. The show wants to walk its characters through every station of the cross, but it too often strives for intensity and winds up merely glum.
The schlubby, inward-looking torpidity of Ruffalo’s performance doesn’t help quicken the pulse. (It’s tempting to think what kind of electricity Michael Keaton, who was initially cast in the part, might have brought to it.) But Pelphrey brings a wounded soulfulness to his working-class striver, a man who’s so driven to secure a better life that he’s ignoring the life he’s actually living. He can be a hurt puppy one minute, explosively violent the next, full of pain and anger and desires too big for him to get his muscled arms around. It’s a star-making performance.
The weekly drip is the right dose for Task, not so much because each episode bears mulling over, but because it takes that long to recover. Bingeing the whole thing would be like slugging cough syrup. But temperance is one of the cardinal virtues, so give each episode room to breathe—maybe go for a walk, feel the sun on your face—and the show can be rewarding in its own determined way.
