Whenever I see a reversal of what was once touted to be a revolutionary policy that attempts to undo decades of habit, I am more than a little gratified and admittedly even a tad adminishing. And I’ve had ample opportunity over the past few years to feel that way about the fine folks at HBO, who between the rebranding and re-rebranding of their streaming service and the pivoting of their calls to action to be increasingly toward it have resulted in many missteps that have ultimately led them right back to where they once were. Which considering that would include the fact that they tended to own Sunday nights despite their distribution and availability handicaps isn’t such a bad thing.
And we’re not just simply talking about ratings, which of course has only mattered to the folks that contribute to the shows deemed worthy enough for that esteemed scheduling. To be an HBO Sunday Night show, at the very least you had better be original, creative, buzzworthy and capable of eventually taking home a bunch of awards. It’s been that way certainly since the glory days of SOPRANOS and SEX AND THE CITY, and I’d even contend that something as lame as FIRST AND TEN got me to include it in my choices on what is still the most-viewed night of the week for TV and whatever else qualifies as it. And despite the fact that an awful lot of one-time competitors, including AMC and now NBC, have completely given up even trying to pursue non-sports viewers (which is still the statistical majority) HBO has actually put their foot on the gas pedal and increased the number of such shows this year, with even those that had previously aired in the slot (e.g. THE GILDED AGE and EASTBOUND AND DOWN) getting a halo effect with increases over prior years’ deliveries, while most of all maintaining a stranglehold on zeitgeist.
The latest is debuting tonight, and it’s from a familiar source who previously had contributed one of those gems that had initially been overlooked but over time has developed a much larger cumulative audience and appreciation. THE SLATE’s Sam Adams explained further this morning:
Four years after Kate Winslet got a nation to fall in love with the most unpleasant accent the United States has ever produced, Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby returns to Philadelphia’s 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’s Tom Brandis isn’t a washed-up high school basketball star, but a former Catholic priest, and his son isn’t dead, but he is in jail, for a crime whose precise nature takes a few episodes to become clear. But there’s no mistaking that the shows take place in the same universe. When Ruffalo’s FBI agent, who’s 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.
And so far, the zeitgeist is overwhelmingly positive. INDIE WIRE’s Ben Travers is arguably zealotic:
“Task” is so ingrained in the arduous lives of its dueling leads — Robbie and Tom (Mark Ruffalo), the FBI agent assigned to catch him — that it’s able to simultaneously sweep us away to another place and level us with its wrenching reality. Casually shedding the clichés it’s built upon, HBO‘s crime saga mounts a potent blend of cat-and-mouse chase, bleak family drama, and a character study of quite a few characters under extreme emotional duress. The laughs may be hard to come by, but the emphasis on caring — not as a burden to escape, but a responsibility to embrace — more than makes up for the hardships along the way.
And THE WALL STREET JOURNAL’s John Anderson weighed in even more emphatically earlier last week:
Everyone is out to escape something in “Task,” though it will be holding viewers happily hostage: Perhaps the best crime thriller of the year, it’s also a validation of the seven-, eight-, or nine-part TV series. Which is a bit paradoxical, actually: No one here converses in tidy, screenwriter-friendly paragraphs of expository dialogue intended to get entire life stories out of the way while bum-rushing us into the action. The information here—who is who, who did what, why it’s all happening—is parceled out in tantalizing morsels. And yet the pace is exhilarating.
And of course, baving both the creative and geographic tentacles to MARE has assured it will get the full-blown “Prestige TV” treatment from the Bill Simmons team that includes the unapologetically Philadelphia homer Chris Ryan and his (H)BO-otlicking colleagues at THE RINGER. A point we can practically hear the gushy and condescending keepers of that feed echoing what the ironically named Adams (the other way to assure support from that group is a connection to Simmons’ belowed Boston) already pointed out:
The simultaneous success of Mare and Abbott Elementary has given rise to an unprecedented wave of shows set in and around Philadelphia, including Netflix’s The Madness, Hulu’s Deli Boys, Apple TV+’s Dope Thief, and Peacock’s Long Bright River…Ingelsby squeezes references to scrapple, water ice, and shopping at the Acme into Task’s first 30 seconds of dialogue. Before that, though, there’s 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’s Delaware County garbageman says the word “online.” 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.
And on a Sunday where the Iggles aren’t even playing, and the Phillies are firmly entrenched in first place, one can rest assured that practically anyone with Philadelphia ties will be urging tune-in and odds are evangelizing about TASK, ultimately prompting anyone with enough bandwidth or disinterest in Sunday Night Football and/or Baseball to at some point change the channel the way they;ve been conditioned to for generations. And since HBO Max is now once again fully aligned with the mothership, even those non-linear upstarts are likely inclined to find their way to TASK at some point before Monday morning.
Watercoolers may now a lot less prevalent in many tastemakers’ lives, but watercooler content still prevails. It’s pretty clear TASK has those qualities and then some. Grab a cheesesteak and enjoy.
Until next time…