“Men do not despise a thief,” it says in the Book of Proverbs, “if he steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.” That is the Christian interpretation of an age-old moral conundrum: is it OK to filch a loaf of bread to feed your family? From Oliver Twist to Les Misérables, via The Grapes of Wrath, this is a theme that writers love to explore, and it’s a thread that is picked up, once again, by a new Sky Atlantic crime drama, Task.
Robbie (Tom Pelphrey) is a single parent, living in rural Pennsylvania with his kids and his niece Maeve (Emilia Jones), whose father, Robbie's brother, has recently died. By day, he’s a binman, but under cover of nightfall, he and his buddy Cliff (Raúl Castillo) conduct a series of daring burglaries on a drug-dealing biker gang, the Dark Hearts. Across town, FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) has been off active duty since his wife was killed by their son during a psychotic episode. But he’s dragged back onto the streets when he’s put in charge of a taskforce to investigate this string of robberies, which have culminated in a suspected child abduction. Both men – Robbie and Tom – are grieving, torn between confronting their trauma and running from it. But poor decisions beget poor decisions, and soon the stakes are irretrievably high, and a crash, back to earth, becomes inevitable.
