{"id":207571,"date":"2025-09-07T12:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T12:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207571\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T12:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T12:18:09","slug":"hbos-new-show-from-the-mare-of-easttown-creator-will-make-a-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/207571\/","title":{"rendered":"HBO\u2019s new show from the Mare of Easttown creator will make a star."},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years after Kate Winslet got a nation to fall in love with the most unpleasant accent the United States has ever produced<\/a>, Mare of Easttown<\/a> creator Brad Ingelsby returns to Philadelphia\u2019s 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\u2019s Tom Brandis isn\u2019t a washed-up high school basketball star<\/a>, but a former Catholic priest, and his son isn\u2019t dead, but he is in jail, for a crime whose precise nature takes a few episodes to become clear. But there\u2019s no mistaking that the shows take place in the same universe. When Ruffalo\u2019s FBI agent, who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The simultaneous success of Mare and Abbott Elementary has given rise to an unprecedented wave of shows<\/a> set in and around Philadelphia, including Netflix\u2019s The Madness, Hulu\u2019s Deli Boys, Apple TV+\u2019s Dope Thief, and Peacock\u2019s 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\u2019s not enough that the grandfather of Amanda Seyfried\u2019s 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\u2019s first 30 seconds of dialogue. Before that, though, there\u2019s 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\u2019s Delaware County garbageman says the word \u201conline.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Ruffalo\u2019s Tom shares Task\u2019s opening sequence with Pelphrey\u2019s Robbie, as both men rise and greet the day\u2014Tom with groggy reluctance, Robbie with a sense of possibility and purpose. But it turns out Robbie isn\u2019t just a go-getter, or a dreamer who starts one dating-app interaction with \u201cI strongly believe people come into people\u2019s lives for a reason.\u201d He\u2019s 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 (Ra\u00fal 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.<\/p>\n

The string of small-time robberies isn\u2019t 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\u2014he\u2019d rather be home, chugging vodka from a giant Phillies cup\u2014Tom 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\u2019t lost his taste for penance, even if he\u2019s no longer sure there\u2019s any reward waiting for him after he\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

Ingelsby, who wrote all of Task\u2019s seven episodes (he shares story credit on three with Easttown\u2019s 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\u2014Tom\u2019s teenage daughter, Emily (Silvia Dionicio), Robbie\u2019s adult niece, Maeve (Emilia Jones)\u2014who 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\u2019 drug shipments risks touching off a bloody gang war.<\/p>\n

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    Naturally, one of Robbie\u2019s heists goes sideways, and what was a string of victimless crimes starts piling up a body count. Before long we\u2019re in the middle of a biker drama as well, with the Dark Hearts\u2019 elder statesman, Perry (Jamie McShane), trying to prevent his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Jayson (Sam Keeley), from leading the club into dangerous territory. It\u2019s at this point that it starts to feel like Task could use a little pulp to help its gears turn more smoothly\u2014that 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.<\/p>\n

    The schlubby, inward-looking torpidity of Ruffalo\u2019s performance doesn\u2019t help quicken the pulse. (It\u2019s 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\u2019s so driven to secure a better life that he\u2019s ignoring the life he\u2019s 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\u2019s a star-making performance.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

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    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\u2014maybe go for a walk, feel the sun on your face\u2014and the show can be rewarding in its own determined way.<\/p>\n

    Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years after Kate Winslet got a nation to fall in love with the most unpleasant accent the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":207572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4219,171,5560,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-207571","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115162979256783662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}