'Task' Is One of This Year’s Most Grounded, Humane and Satisfying Crime Dramas
In an era when films and shows are designed to seem endless (with consecutive sequels and multiple seasons) I’ve come to appreciate standalone films and miniseries. A miniseries in particular, meant to tell one story in between six to twelve episodes, has become a rarity in the midst of a deluge of platforms – where executives are only very eager to commission a second season for successful shows that have definite endings. It’s what I had appreciated about Mare of Easttown, a typical prestige TV procedural, headlined by an A-lister (Kate Winslet). The show didn’t necessarily reinvent the genre, but it delivered a rich world set in rural Pennsylvania, where a sleepy town hides secrets in plain sight. And how a compassionate cop goes about investigating a murder case, while handling fragile egos and respecting the lines in the sand.
The creator Brad Inglesby might have been suggested a second season for Mare of Easttown, and we should be grateful that he’s served us with Task instead. For fans of the Kate Winslet show, one might be able to identify Inglesby’s fingerprints all over his latest series – set in Pennsylvania’s suburbs, with a lead cop who is grappling with personal demons of their own, and consisting of a rich variety of characters that makes the world much more tactile for its viewers. Like Mare of Easttown, Task doesn’t rewrite the rules of the genre with radical swings. But it’s written, shot, acted with so much painstaking care that it almost convinces you otherwise. And that’s the biggest strength of this seven-episode miniseries.
Like most cop-robber films, Inglesby sets up his parallel protagonists – Robbie Pendergrast (Tom Pelphrey) and Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) in the first scene, contrasting their morning routines. Robbie carries his still-asleep son to another bed, trying his best to not wake anyone. Meanwhile, Tom wakes up and dunks his face into a sink full of ice cubes, trying to shock his body up after a late night of drinking. Robbie is a garbage man, who, along with his friend, Cliff (Raul Castillo), have something sinister going on, the way they wade through the trash of certain homes, and give a knowing look to each other. Tom, on the other hand, looks only too happy to arrange the brochures, goodies for an FBI recruitment stall at a career fair. Pelphrey looks laser focused, even as Ruffalo appears to have mastered the beaten-down look as Tom, grappling with an unspeakable tragedy (much like Winslet’s Mare, whose son kills herself).
A still from 'Task'.
Robbie and Cliff have been looting drug houses that belong to a biker gang called the Dark Hearts. When a seemingly in-and-out robbery inevitably goes wrong, three people are killed, a bag full of drugs worth more than a million dollars are found, and the FBI puts together a task force to nab Robbie and his crew. The task force summons Tom out of his semi-sabbatical, as he’s handed a team with an inexperienced, nervous local cop, Lizzie (Alison Oliver), a sharpshooter Aleah (Thuso Mbedu), who details in one scene how she escaped a bad marriage. Also, there’s Delaware detective Grasso (Fabien Frankel), who has all the boy scout traits of a young officer, and some interesting questions when he finds out Tom was a priest before getting recruited to become a field agent for the FBI.
Unlike Mare of Easttown, Task is not a mystery; It’s a diligent police procedural, prioritising world building, and one that accords empathy and respect to even its tertiary characters. Chief among them is Donna (Stephanie Kurtzuba), a tough-seeming, maternal-figure waitress at a bar, which doubles up as the headquarters for the Dark Hearts. Inglesby’s world is rich with such backstories – a murdered Dark Heart member, an estranged son, a husband stewing in anger, a girl in her early 20s assuming the responsibility of a broken family on her brittle shoulders. No detail is too minor for the show, which introduces Lizzie by showing her fighting with her newly-divorced husband over the phone. A throwaway scene tells us about a ruthless Dominican kingpin called Freddy (Elvis Nolasco), recounting the first thing he bought — he points to his teeth — when he made a decent amount of money in America. On an otherwise mundane evening, he was beaten while walking home after dinner with his wife. This little detail encapsulates the journey that this man has been through to get to the place that he occupies today – and why he sounds as tough as he does.
A still from 'Task'.
However, a bulk of the show’s merit rests on the show’s three primary performers. Pelphrey plays Robbie as a large-hearted robber, who might have resorted to crime out of desperation, but doesn’t forget his kindness. He values his crew’s loyalty, and despite being an otherwise volatile man, he circumvents his rage to solve his current crisis. My favourite performance in the show is by Maeve (Emilia Jones), Robbie’s niece, who is thrust with the responsibility of his adolescent children. Jones, who broke out into the mainstream with her Oscar-winning film, CODA (2023), is almost unrecognisably good in this, playing the conflicted Maeve, who often becomes Robbie’s conscience in the show. As Tom, Ruffalo lends gravitas to what could have been another iteration of the haunted, beaten cop. He brings unerring physicality to the role: his portly frame, the rusted joints of a cop approaching retirement, unable to keep his family on its axis after his wife’s untimely death.
Task reveals its aces slowly, and ends up among the most grounded, humane and satisfying crime thrillers of the year. The plot fuelled by intrigue, double-crossing, and familial conflict (in both Tom and Robbie’s families) doesn’t merely end when the cop finally confronts the robber towards the end. I was surprised to find it happening with still one and a half episodes to go. There’s enough meat in Inglesby’s world for it to propel forward towards a soaring monologue inside a courtroom. I was left with tears of catharsis. Also, no indications of a second season.
*All of episodes of ‘Task’ are streaming on an OTT platform.
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