Four years after giving us the superb 'Mare of Easttown,' screenwriter Brad Inglesby has delivered another HBO miniseries with fully fleshed out characters struggling to do the right thing.
Set once again in Pennsylvania, 'Task' features Mark Ruffalo as a former Catholic priest turned FBI agent who is recalled to field duty after spending his time at recruitment fairs in colleges.
Tom Brandis, however, is nursing his own demons.
He's a widower with a drink problem who is estranged from his adopted son, Andrew Russell's Ethan who is serving time in jail as he waits to be tried for murder.
In spite of his messy family life, Tom is asked by his no nonsense FBI boss, Martha Plimpton's Kathleen McGinty to head up a hunt for a missing young boy, Ben Doherty's Sam who has disappeared after his drug dealing parents are gunned down in a stash house.
The shooting, however, has been a botched robbery, with Tom Pelphrey's garbage collector Robbie Prendergrast, his colleague Raul Castillo's Cliff Broward and Owen Teague's Peaches panicking when their raid doesn't go according to plan.
Normally when they raid stash houses, Robbie's gang would have managed to seize cash but this time the intelligence they have received is all wrong.
A gun battle erupts, Peaches is killed along with Sam's parents and reeling from the bloodbath, Robbie takes a holdall of drugs and the young boy with him as he flees with Cliff.
Bringing Sam to the forest home he shares with his niece, Emilia Jones' Maeve, he saddles her with the boy while he tries to figure out with Cliff what to do with the drugs.
This doesn't surprise Maeve who has been raising Robbie's kids anyway after the departure of his wife a year earlier.
We soon learn that the raids Robbie has been carrying out are actually an act of revenge - designed to hit the pockets of the drug dealing biker gang responsible for murdering his brother, Maeve's father.
Aware that a holdall of drugs have disappeared along with Sam, Jamie McShane's vicious leader of the Dark Hearts biker gang Perry Dorazo and his second in command, Sam Keeley's Jayson Wilkes set about tracking down those responsible.
But can they find them before Tom's ramshackle team of local police officers seconded into the FBI - Thuso Mbedu's diligent Aleah Clinton, Fabien Frankel's smooth talking Anthony Grasso and Alison Oliver's nervous Lizzie Stover?
Inglesby and his directors Jeremiah Zagar and Salli Richardson Whitfield deliver seven superbly written, impeccably directed episodes packed full of intelligent dialogue and wonderfully rounded characters.
'Task' is so well written, it has characters who ought to be saints who sin.
It also has sinners who surprise you with their good deeds and those characters who really are evil are genuinely terrifying.
With scripts as rich as those delivered by Inglesby, the cast have a great platform to turn in excellent performances.
Ruffalo is a joy to watch and seems born to play Landis - imbuing his flawed and jaded FBI hero with a strong sense of decency and integrity.
Pelphrey does a superb job as lost man who gets way in over his head by dabbling in revenge crime, while Castillo impresses as his twitchy accomplice.
Jones turns in another intelligent performance as Maeve, while Plimpton, Oliver, Frankel and Mbedu delight as the imperfect parts of an imperfect FBI team.
Meanwhile Keeley and McShane are genuinely scary.
As with 'Mare of Easttown,' each episode is perfectly paced and the domestic storyline complements the police procedural.
Indeed one of the show's greatest strengths is watching Brandis being called out for his failings by his biological daughter, Phoebe Fox's Sara, his adoptive daughter, Silvia Dionicio's Emily and Isaach de Bankole's Catholic priest and longtime friend, Father Daniel Georges.
The show's family and friendship dynamics are as believable as the FBI procedural and they enrich the storyline.
Coming hot on the heels of his screenplay for Paul Greengrass's Apple TV+ movie 'The Lost Bus,' 'Task' confirms Inglesby as one of the most exciting writers working in film and television today.
After the brash cartoon antics of Steven Knight's 'House of Guinness,' it's a real delight to watch a show that isn't all mouth and no trousers.
Unlike a lot of other recent small screen dramas, 'Task' is a show of real substance, with real characters, real heart, real brains and real brawn.
It never feels forced. It never feels false and it knows how to revel in its characters' many flaws and failures.
'Task' is so good, it might just be the best show you'll see on TV this year and remember, that's in a year that has given us 'Adolescence,' 'This City Is Ours,' 'Dope Thief' and Season Four of 'The Bear'.
('Task' was broadcast on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Ireland between September 8-October 20, 2025)
After giving us two series of life in a sweary 1980s Australian TV newsroom, we have one more outing for Michael Lucas's ABC drama 'The Newsreader'.
Series Three of the drama finds Sam Reid's in the closet heartthrob newscaster Dale Jennings riding the crest of a wave.
Host of the News At Six, he is feted at the Logies, Australia's version of the Emmys, picking up the prestigious Gold Logie for the country's most admired TV personality.
Anna Torv's Helen Norville has returned to Australia after her bitter split from the News at Six team in Series Two.
During the awards ceremony she is horrified to learn that her new current affairs show on a rival channel 'Public Eye' is being put in the six o'clock slot in direct competition with Dale's show.
This is seen as a declaration of war by the 'News at Six's spiteful, loudmouth newsroom chief, William McInnes' Lindsay Cunningham who tries to undermine the new show on its first night by manufacturing an anonymous tip-off about the death of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
However Lindsay's boorish and vindictive behaviour increasingly starts to irritate Dale - especially when Cunningham tries to spike his suggestion that he should interview Prime Minister Bob Hawke on the night 'Public Eye' first goes to air.
Leaning on Michelle Lim Davidson's talented researcher Nolene Kim to set up the interview, even though she is meant to be on maternity leave, Dale is the toast of the newsroom when he secures the interview and takes up her suggestion of asking the Prime Minister about his marital infidelity for the first time in public.
As Helen and her producer, Daniel Henshall's Bill McFarlane initially struggle to make a dent in the ratings, Dale uses his growing clout to topple Lindsay as head of the newsroom, painting him as a racist, out of touch dinosaur and plotting his demise with Nolene's husband, Stephen Peacocke's sports bulletin reader Rob Rickards.
Linked in the newspapers with Philippa Northeast's Kay Walters, the daughter of the deceased newscasting legend Geoff Walters and his wife, Marg Downey's Evelyn, Dale struggles with being a closeted gay man - secretly paying rent boys.
However when the tables turn and 'Public Eye' scoops 'News at Six' over coverage of Tiananmen Square, Dale's world starts to crumble while Lindsay lands some really underhand blows at the expense of Helen by exposing her troubles with mental health.
Previous series of 'The Newsreader' have been a lot of fun - mixing real life news stories from the 1980s with frothy tales about television journalists navigating a bitchy world of gossip columns and office politics.
With Series Three, though, effectively being the last throw of the dice for Lucas's show, the stakes are even higher for it to end on a high.
For the most part, Series Three succeeds - delivering what you'd hope.
Working from scripts by Lucas, Christine Bartlett, Adrian Russell Wills and Niki Aiken, the show again smartly uses real life events as a springboard for its stories about the journalists who deliver the news.
And once again, the show has a nice handle on the dynamics of a TV newsroom.
The series director Emma Freeman also does a decent job recreating the attitudes and look of the late 1980s.
However just when you think it's home and dry, the show wobbles in the final furlong with a denouement that doesn't really satisfy.
The disintegration of one character and the subsequent way that character is miraculously pulled to safety just doesn't convince.
Torv and Reid, though, remain the show's strongest cards - the former bringing a Cate Blanchett style heft to the role of Helen Norville and the latter injecting more fragility into the role of Dale Jennings.
Davidson, Peacocke, McInnes, Northeast, Downey, Chum Ehelepola as Lindsay's long suffering deputy Dennis Tibb and Caroline Lee as the newsroom secretary Jean Pascoe provide sturdy support.
Henshall is a decent addition to the show, while McInnes relishes the chance to really unleash his character's villainy and explore Lindsay's worst excesses.
But by the time we reach Episode Six, there's a sense that Lucas and the programme makers are right to call it a day.
They've taken 'The Newsreader' as far as it can go and it just about slumps over the finishing line.
It's best to leave it right there.
(Series Three of 'The Newsreader' was broadcast on BBC2 between September 11-26, 2025)
Comments
Post a Comment