By: Alex Tilton

At this point it needs to be said that although the letters HBO don’t guarantee that you personally will enjoy a series, it does guarantee that the series isn’t going to suck. Each week when the newest episode of Task is over my wife and I are basically salivating with frustration. We want to see it now. It’s so good that we almost considered just waiting until the entire series was out so we could binge it in one sitting. 

Task is done by the same people who created Mare of Easttown, which was amazing. And it’s part of an ongoing trend of prestige TV set in Pennsylvania (see also Long Bright River). Mark Ruffalo stars as aging, alcohol abusing FBI agent Tom Brandis. Brandis has been assigned to lead a task force (hence the name, Task) investigating a series of home invasion robberies against drug dens being carried out by a three-man crew. The crew is led by a man named Robbie (played by Tom Pelphrey). His motivation at first seems to be simply money. But as events progress, it becomes clear that money is only one of his reasons. Things go sideways during one of the robberies and the situation escalates horrifically. 

What struck me about this event was that it told us right away this series wasn’t going to go on for ten or twelve episodes. Given what happened that simply couldn’t be the case. I suppose if I’d bothered to look it up beforehand I could’ve just read that somewhere, but I didn’t have to because this show knows how to get information across without spelling it out. Stories that assume the audience has a brain are just better. I’ll start listing the good things because essentially nothing in this series is bad.

The main characters are given enough breathing space to establish their identities and make them feel human. The supporting characters are well developed without overpowering the leads. Their arcs are (with one exception) connected to the larger story and don’t feel like filler. The director keeps them on screen for exactly as long as they are interesting and then moves back to the main thread. None of the dialogue feels contrived or off topic. When the characters are discussing things other than the case it’s because those topics come up organically. Every character’s motivation makes sense. 

At no point does anyone do anything inexplicably stupid because the plot needs them to. There are a couple of actions taken by major characters that feel poorly thought out, but they come across as believable human error. The writers put in the work and built their story around the rules of plausibility. Plausibility creates empathy in the audience, which makes it possible for them to care what happens.

And I have to praise the choice of the miniseries format for this story; seven episodes is the correct length. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it doesn’t cut corners. I want more series done this way. The show is getting overwhelmingly good reviews and it will make more people subscribe to HBO, because in this case they truly earned it. Giving the writers creative control results in better products which keeps the customers happy which makes you more money. Got it? Good.

So, what (if anything) was bad about this show? There’s an unnecessary subplot involving Brandis’ adult children. It initially serves to explain his mindset and generally shed light on how he came to be who he is. Structurally this is meant to humanize the protagonist, and it does. The problem is that it takes on a soap-opera-ish life of its own that has essentially zero connection to the core story and is therefore boring. There are multiple scenes that depict Brandis’ adopted daughter Emily in therapy, and her clash with his biological daughter Sara who clearly thinks her vote on an important family issue should carry more weight. It’s all done very well, but it has no business being the B plot when the A plot is such a deadly serious urgent situation. Every time they switched to this thread it felt like someone slammed on the brakes and killed the momentum. Other characters have their own subplots, but they only exist in connection to the main thread.

So, this is a strong recommendation from me. HBO demonstrates once again that they know what they’re doing and we’re all better off because of it. 

Image Source: RottenTomatoes.com