Gritty, realistic, down-to-earth: If you read much about Task, the new crime drama from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby, those are the kinds of adjectives you can expect to see. You won’t see them used about the show’s music, though, that’s for sure. Composed by Baltimore electronic musician Dan Deacon, Task’s score soars, it sizzles, it screeches, it screams. It’s an insanely overheated sonic signature for the show, making anything from fixing a morning coffee to brushing dead leaves off a porch sound like Oppenheimer waiting for the bomb to go off.
I love that for Task, personally. And I love how much director Jeremiah Zagar echoes that energy in his shot compositions — men framed in colorful doorways, masked monsters pass in slow silence across every axis of the frame. There’s a charge to how this thing looks and sounds that I couldn’t find in Mare outside of Kate Winslet’s lead performance. It feels like a big leap forward.
I reviewed the series premiere of Task for Decider.
Tags: decider, task, TV, TV reviews