Martha Plimpton and Mark Ruffalo in HBO's 'Task' Peter Kramer/HBO Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Questions of forgiveness hang over much of Task, the new HBO crime drama from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby: its possibility, its purpose, its outermost limits. It's no wonder, considering how many of its characters endure or perpetuate the sort of suffering that can make mercy seem impossibly out of reach. Spouses, in this gritty Philadelphia suburb, are mostly faithless, absent or dead. Parents, even the well-meaning ones, tend to be neglectful, or also dead. Friends can lie, colleagues can backstab, anyone can die in any number of brutal ways. Innocent children, trusting and helpless, absorb the consequences. Related Stories TV Inside the Making of 'Task,' the Crime Drama Follow-Up to 'Mare of Easttown' TV HBO's 'Task' Gets New Trailer, Premiere Date Task The Bottom Line A bummer, in more ways than one. Airdate: 9 p.m. Sunday, Sep. 7 (HBO)Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelphrey, Emilia Jones, Jamie McShane, Sam Keeley, Thuso Mbedu, Fabien Frankel, Alison Oliver, Raúl Castillo, Silvia Dionicio, Phoebe Fox, Martha PlimptonCreator: Brad Ingelsby If the pain is clear to see, however, the point of watching it all is less obvious. Task is well crafted in many regards, with a top-notch cast, painstakingly worn-in sets (Keith Cunningham serves as production designer) and handsome nature-oriented cinematography (courtesy of Alex Disenhof and Elie Smolkin). But its unrelenting misery has a way of flattening rather than deepening the characters at its heart, until the story feels like less than the sum of its parts. That both of its leading men have suffered some great heartache is obvious from the first minutes of the premiere, directed by Jeremiah Zagar and set to Dan Deacon's weepy score - even if the precise shape and scope of their losses will take some time to tease out. Tom (Mark Ruffalo) is a priest turned FBI agent who starts his mornings in prayer, his face sagged with soul-deep exhaustion. He spends his days manning booths at the career fair and ends his evenings in a vodka-soaked stupor, to the worry of his sweet teenage daughter Emily (Silvia Dionicio). In another part of town, Robbie (Tom Pelphrey), a garbage truck operator, kisses his two adorable elementary-school-aged kids goodbye and drives to work listening to dating app ads. He's lonely, he confides to his best friend and coworker (Raúl Castillo's Cliff), and haunted by dreams of a better life. But if things look bad now, only more trouble lies ahead. Robbie and Cliff spend their nights robbing drug houses, until a botched job leaves several dead bodies and a missing 7-year-old boy (Ben Lewis Doherty's Sam) in its wake. The incident prompts the local FBI chief (Martha Plimpton) to assign Tom to a task force investigating the burglaries, over his protests that he's not ready to return to the field. Worse, the crisis has also attracted the attention of a local biker gang known as the Dark Hearts, led by the volatile Jayson (Sam Keeley) and his stern mentor, Perry (Jamie McShane). Task is not a mystery. Sam's whereabouts might be unknown to Tom and his team, consisting of slick county detective Anthony (Fabien Frankel), no-nonsense city cop Aleah (Thuso Mbedu) and chaotic state trooper Lizzie (Alison Oliver). But we know from the start what's become of him, and while that may be a kinder choice than dragging out the suspense, it also robs the central premise of urgency. Nor is it much of a thriller. Although there are occasional car chases and shootouts and eventually an upsettingly high body count, its cops are not particularly competent (Lizzie, in fact, is notably incompetent, prone to freezing up at inopportune times), and its criminals not especially clever. Their clashes are purposefully hectic and confused, the better for questioning rather than glorifying acts of violence. No, Task is most interested in serving up a drama about people in pain making their way through a world filled with senseless cruelty and overseen (depending on your religious beliefs) by an indifferent God. But where Mare of Easttown rooted its gloom in a vividly realized community, and occasionally counterbalanced it with bits of warmth or levity, Task is too insular to speak to much of anything beyond how much its characters are hurting. Occasionally, that feels like enough. In one of the series' best scenes, Robbie and Tom come face to face under predictably awful circumstances. But their initial animosity grows more complicated as the two men, both single fathers grappling with grief, guilt and rage, start to see each other as something more than cat or mouse. Pelphrey's high-strung energy and Ruffalo's sad-sack vibe bounce interestingly off each other, and I found myself wishing the plot ha