Streaming columnist NICK OVERALL’s all over a couple of great gritty crime thrillers this week, one American the other British.

The creator of Binge’s streaming hit Mare of Easttown has released his newest show on Max this month.

Called Task, this follow up is a gritty crime thriller that features Mark Ruffalo in the lead role.

Ruffalo plays Tom, a widowed FBI agent in Philadelphia whose loneliness feeds an addiction to work that involves obsessively chasing elusive crooks.

The seven-episode series follows his hunt for a seemingly unassuming garbage man (played by Tom Pelphrey) who’s secretly working a second job as the leader of a gang that carries out violent robberies.

Tom soon learns though this culprit is far more clever and cunning than the many he’s caught before. The show’s intriguing tagline teases the thrilling cat-and-mouse game that ensues: “every force has its equal”.

Like Mare of Easttown, Task has a fascination with its setting of Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania city’s crime-plagued streets once again form the setting for the drama that unfolds.

It’s also a mini-series meaning the story is set to wrap within the one story arc. It’s always refreshing to see a crime drama that has a conclusion locked in to catapult its audience towards. There are just too many to keep up with these days and so not wasting the viewer’s time is essential.

Most of all it’s Ruffalo that seals the deal on this one.

Like Kate Winslet in Mare of Easttown, a gripping lead performance to make the character at the centre of this story pop is what’s needed and Ruffalo absolutely delivers it.

The show may be named Task, but watching this one is anything but.

STAYING on the theme of gritty thrillers, Netflix has got its own glossy miniseries set to compete with Max’s.

Less criminal but more political this one is called Hostage and it’s a British import that’s already doing numbers on the platform.

Hostage follows a fictional prime minister named Abigail Dalton whose leadership is thrown into disarray when her husband is kidnapped.

Those who have taken him from her have one simple ransom request: the PM must resign or her husband will die.

Yes, all that is admittedly a little contrived, but that doesn’t stop the ultimatum from making for some cracking TV.

Things get even more tense when the French president becomes caught in a blackmail scandal, forcing both leaders to work together to untangle a globe-spanning plot that threatens their countries.

Don’t expect any groundbreaking geopolitical commentary here. Hostage is a thrilling yarn first and a political observation piece second but that doesn’t make it any less worth watching.

It’s Suranne Jones who takes on the lead role here with a performance that’s hard to look away from.

Some may recognise Jones from the 2015 psychological thriller series Doctor Foster (on Stan), in which she played a wife who uncovers disturbing revelations about her husband while investigating what she suspects to be an extramarital affair.

In Hostage though, Jones might just have topped it, maybe even delivering her best performance to date.

Where better to do it than in a tension-fuelled 10 Downing Street?

IT’S a rare film that fits into the so-bad-it’-good category, but a new adaptation of War of the Worlds streaming on Amazon Prime Video has catapulted itself in the hall of fame for absolute flops.

I couldn’t resist mentioning this one after scenes went rabidly viral on the internet through just how amusingly bad they were.

The famous sci-fi story about an alien invasion is based on the 1898 book by HG Wells but this new take on the story features none other than US rapper Ice Cube in the lead role.

He plays a security analyst who’s able to tap into a surveillance program that can monitor anyone on Earth. When aliens invade, he not only has to find out what their motive is, but also must help his teenage kids get to safety.

That essentially means the whole story is told from behind a computer screen. It’s like the creators were going for War of the Worlds in the Zoom age but the idea is just so poorly executed that it transcends bad to become hilarious. 

That’s not to mention an eye-watering amount of Amazon product placement that is so blatant it borders on parody. Conveniently the same company that owns the platform it streams on.

I can’t say much, except that it has to be seen to be believed. This is a film so bad it’s truly out of this world.