★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
When friends tell me they stopped watching “Task,” the seven-episode HBO miniseries starring Mark Ruffalo, because the pace is pokey and the subject unrelentingly grim, my immediate reaction is to blurt out—“Are you effing crazy?—before trying for a more reasoned response. Sorry haters, but politeness eludes me in the face of a brilliantly acted, written and directed seven hours of television that cuts a direct and devastating path to the heart.