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........

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