What to watch: Task - a dark tale of middle America

You don't have to be a genius to figure out that robbing drug dealers and serious gang members is not a great long-term business plan. There might be some immediate rewards, and the victims are unlikely to go to law enforcement with their complaints, but you are also going to have crews of extremely angry criminals gunning for you.

On that basis, anyone watching Task knows from the start that things are not going to end well for Robbie and his crew, who use their status as garbage collectors to scope out their targets before hitting them hard in the night. By the end of the first episode of this new HBO series, things have already become hopelessly complicated for the characters.

Robbie, as played by Tom Pelphrey (Ozark), is a sensitive man, trying to do the right thing for his kids and the memory of his dead brother. And you want him to get away with it all, especially with Pelphrey’s deep, sensitive eyes and truly excellent beard.

But - along with the hardcore biker gang he ripped off – Robbie also has Mark Ruffalo’s Tom Brandis chasing him down. Ruffalo is in full grim and gritty mode – he’s the leader of the FBI taskforce sent out to stop the gang, and comes with the obligatory family tragedy hanging over everything he has to deal with.

And Brandis has to deal with a lot. Task is just seven episodes long and the situation quickly become so dire it seems impossible to solve without a lot of bloodshed.

This show doesn't mess about. There are dirty cops and betrayals of blood oaths and one character’s sordid past as a club DJ.

However, there is arguably too much stuffing in the plot. It's hard to care too much about one plotline about a senior gang member’s angst over his failure to protect his protégé, when too many other good people are struggling with their own situation.

Task comes from Brad Ingelsby, the creator of Mare of Easttown, and while it is not quite as dark as that Kate Winslet-led series, it shares themes of a middle America getting darker and nastier, as well as a tendency to suddenly kill off main characters.

But if they can avoid a bullet in the skull, the cast do great character work, with Pelphrey and Ruffalo ably supported by a mostly young cast, especially Emilia Jones’s troubled Maeve, who has to take on more heavy responsibility than anyone her age should have to thanks to her Uncle Robbie.

It all culminates in a lot of gunfire in the woods, and it ends unsurprisingly badly for a lot of people, but there is also some forgiveness, and hope for the future. Some people might be trapped in cycles of retribution and violence, but their kids don’t have to be.

Don't watch if ... you've overdosed on grim, crim small-town US sagas.

Mare of Easttown: This Kate Winslet-starring series from Task creator Brad Ingelsby might just be a few towns over, with similarly desperate people making similarly poor decisions. (Neon)

Ozark: Jason Bateman stars as Marty Byrde, a financial planner who falls foul of a Mexican drug cartel. (Netflix)

True Detective: The Nic Pizzolatto-created American anthology crime drama became an instant classic. (Neon)