Warning: This post contains spoilers for the premiere of Task.
It’s set in the working class suburbs of Philadelphia. It revolves around a troubled detective reeling from a devastating family tragedy. It follows the twisting investigation into a shocking violent crime. Is it Mare of Easttown? No, it’s Task.
More than four years after Mare took the prestige TV world by storm, creator Brad Ingelsby is back with a new limited series crime drama that’s likely to entice fans of its predecessor. Starring Mark Ruffalo as ex-priest-turned-downcast FBI agent Tom Brandis and Tom Pelphrey as blue-collar family man and part-time thief Robbie Prendergrast, Task is a cops and robbers story that empathizes with both men at its center.
“I just think we don’t get to see enough blue-collar stories,” Ingelsby told the Washington Post. “I really don’t. I just feel like that’s a section of people, a class of people, that get overlooked. And when they are in things, they aren’t given the care and consideration and complexity that I think they deserve.”
But where Mare was a whodunnit, Task is more of a cat-and-mouse thriller—a switch-up that the series premiere, which aired Sunday on HBO, quickly made clear. Following an opening montage that highlighted some apparent similarities between the lives of its two main characters, Episode 1 of Task set the scene for an inevitable showdown between the pair.
By the end of the hour, Tom had been assigned to lead a task force responsible for tracking down the perps behind a string of gangland drug-house robberies, the most recent of which turned deadly and resulted in the deaths of three associates of a local biker crew known as the Dark Hearts as well as one of the burglars’ own accomplices. Of course, we the viewers already know unassuming garbage man Robbie and his best friend Cliff (Raúl Castillo) are the culprits Tom has been charged with hunting down.
“The tension of the story is that you care about both of these guys,”…
