Brad Ingelsby has a way of writing about people who cannot shake what life has done to them. He is drawn to bruised souls who go on even when they should probably sit down and breathe. When Mare of Easttown hit, it was not just a crime series. It was a study of grief and guilt wrapped around a mystery. With Task, he returns to the same region and the same ear for the way people talk in and around Philadelphia. He brings a new story that is not a replica of his earlier hit. It has a harder pulse and more smoke in the air. The mystery is not the engine this time. The engine is the way three men smash into one another. A good man. A flawed man. A man who seems to have no heart left. They spin and scrape and leave marks on everyone around them.
Think of Mare as the slow burn cousin to a Boston crime novel. Task leans more toward the heist and fallout world. Less puzzle, more pressure. It feels closer to The Town than to a whodunit. The show moves with a different rhythm. It is tenser, more willing to let violence change the room in a second. It does not always lock into place the way Mare did. There are turns later in the season that feel like they exist to juice the ride rather than grow from who these people are. Yet I never felt it fall apart. The craft is strong. The cast is alive. And at its core it has a clean and powerful idea. How does a decent man keep his soul when he is standing between a wounded man and a cruel one. How long until they all get dragged under.
Let us start with the good man. Tom Brandis is played by Mark Ruffalo with quiet ache. He is a widower. He works for the FBI, but not how you think. His days are spent recruiting new blood, not chasing suspects. He relaxes by watching birds on weekends, drifting along the edges of the world. He has a teenage daughter named Emily. He is doing his best with her but there is a shadow over their house that you can feel in the way they speak to each other. It involves a son of his who is not there. The details are a gut punch and better discovered when the show gives them to you, but they leave Tom with a strange test. He used to be a priest, which is not nothing. He is a man who has preached forgiveness and now has to find out if he can even do it.
Ruffalo carries Tom like a man wearing a pack full of bricks. You can see how it never truly comes off. There are two escapes that almost work. One is a bottle and the other is the rush of a case. When work turns the lights back on for him, he feels like someone coming up for air. You can tell he knows this is not sustainable. That is part of what makes the performance sing. He does not chew scenery or make speeches about pain. He lets the smallest looks do the work. It might be the most restrained and deepest acting he has done in a while.
Tom is not supposed to be running anything big. He keeps his head down. That changes when his boss, played with a dry chill by Martha Plimpton, calls him in. She needs him to lead a task force. The job is ugly but simple to explain. Someone is finding drug houses in the suburbs and taking them apart. Masked men break in, smash the place, grab cash, grab product, disappear. They are going to light a fuse if they keep going. Rival crews do not call the cops when you rob them. They start wars. The community gets caught in the middle and it gets bad fast.
Tom builds a small team. Three younger agents who each bring a clear flavor. There is Lizzie, awkward in a way that you learn to love, played by Alison Oliver with a shy blade under the surface. There is Grasso, confident and sharp, played by Fabien Frankel with the kind of bounce that draws your eye. There is Aleah, steely and focused, played by Thuso Mbedu, who gives the whole thing a backbone. Their scenes with Ruffalo are some of the most grounded in the show. You watch them learn each other. You see how they pick up each others rhythms. A look. A nod. A quiet moment in the office when a case starts to feel like something they can solve.
Across the line is the flawed man. Robbie is his name. He is brought to life by Tom Pelphrey, who keeps finding ways to make broken men human. Robbie is not a monster. He is also not a hero. He is a man who has been punched by life until he started swinging at the air. We learn in the first hour that his wife is gone. She left him with two children and a mess that he is not ready to handle. They are living with his niece Maeve, played by Emilia Jones, because his brother is dead. Murdered. You can feel how every room in this family house has a story taped to the walls. None of them are simple. None of them are finished.
Robbie works a blue collar job with his buddies, Cliff and Peaches. Raul Castillo plays Cliff with a weary loyalty. Owen Teague gives Peaches the energy of a kid who wants to be dangerous and cannot tell when he already is. Their plan is not original but it feels inevitable. They are not sticking up diners. They are robbing drug dealers. Bad guys robbing worse guys sounds like easy math. In the real world, it almost always turns out to be the wrong kind of equation. They think they can get in, get out, and change their fortunes without setting off the sharks. Of course they cannot. One of their operations goes off the rails by the end of the first episode, and you can feel the path they are on snap shut like a trap.
Pelphrey is terrific at showing a man who knows he is sinking and still cannot stop moving. Robbie is smart enough to see the walls closing in. That is what makes his choices hurt. He is not clueless. He just runs out of clean options. Bad choice or worse choice. The way Pelphrey plays the strain in his face boxes out melodrama. He keeps the truth in view. It is hard not to think of his work on Ozark while you watch him here, but he is not repeating himself. He owns Robbie. You believe he is trying to keep his kids afloat even as he drags more cold water into the boat.
Then there is the man at the other point of this triangle. Perry. Jamie McShane gives him a chill that seeps into your clothes. He runs a motorcycle crew that moves product, and he is not a man you want to cross. His drugs are the ones being stolen, so he pays attention. McShane does not play him big. He plays him quiet. The menace comes from how little he gives away. He will look at someone and you understand that this is a bad day turning into something worse. There is a calm in him that is its own warning. When he speaks, you listen. When he does not, you listen even harder.
As the task force pushes forward and Robbie’s crew stumbles through their plan, the three men start to bend toward each other. Tom wants to stop blood from hitting the street. Robbie wants to stop his life from burning down around his kids. Perry wants control and revenge. When their desires collide, the show finds its pace. Scenes crackle because everyone feels a step from making a mistake they cannot unsay. Anger and fear and guilt crowd the frame. A quiet scene at a kitchen table can be as tense as a robbery. When violence comes, it is fast and ugly and leaves real scars.
Ingelsby knows this world. He knows how the bars in a corner pub feel when you lean on them. He knows how a rowhouse block sounds at dusk. He knows these accents and he knows the way grief can turn a soft voice sharp. Task is soaked in that sense of place. The details feel right. The cops do not look like movie cops. The criminals, for the most part, look like the men who take the early shift on a work truck. The show lets people be tired. It lets people be proud in small ways. A father who makes breakfast and fails to get the eggs right still tries again. A boss who keeps her distance shows a sliver of care in the most sideways way. These little moments build weight.
The direction is clean and attentive. The camera does not announce itself. It sits close when it needs to. It pulls back when a space needs to breathe. There are a few scenes that are staged so well you do not see the craft until you think back on them later. Small choices turn into mood. A colder palette in a house that no longer feels like home. A warmer wash in a bar that only offers comfort until you stand up. It is not flashy. It is expert. That is to the show’s credit.
The writing takes risks in the back half of the season. Some turns worked for me. Others felt like the story was forcing a thrill into the mix because a thriller is expected to do that at a certain minute mark. It is also true that a character who pops early in the run gets less to do later. Emilia Jones gives Maeve a lovely balance at first. She is tender with the kids, brittle with Robbie, not interested in being a saint. As the plot tightens, she slides toward the edge of the frame. The show just gets crowded. It is a shame. She grounds some of the early scenes and you miss her when she is gone.
Even with those quibbles, the foundation of the series does not crack. That first hour is a gem. It sets a tone and introduces people who feel three dimensional from their first moments. It is not that later hours are bad. They just answer to a different master as explosions get louder and choices get more desperate. Enough of what makes the premiere special remains. The core idea never leaves. Emotion wins too often. Logic loses to fear. Pride pushes good judgment into a ditch. That is the theme, and the show honors it right to the end.
I have to go back to Ruffalo because the show is built around the gravity he brings. Tom is a former priest who cannot stop thinking about forgiveness, and you see how that idea eats at him. How much can any person forgive. Where does justice stop and mercy begin. He is trying to be a good father to Emily and also a person who functionally exists in the world. There are scenes where he has had too much to drink and he is halfway up the stairs and the weight on his back keeps him on the steps. There are scenes where he is working with his team and it is like the sun comes out for the length of a conversation. Ruffalo never makes it showy. He keeps it honest and low to the ground. That choice makes every quiet pain land.
Pelphrey matches him by never asking you to excuse Robbie. He asks you to understand him. He knows he is doing wrong. He wants to stop. He does not know how. He tries. He fails. He tries again. He takes a step that cannot be taken back. He pays. It is a familiar arc for a crime story but it does not feel stale because the human beats feel lived in. When he holds his kids, you believe he would burn the world down to keep them safe. When he gets in the truck with Cliff and Peaches, you believe he loves them in a way that makes him blind to what they cannot handle.
Jamie McShane is the cold wind that blows through both of them. Perry makes the other two sharper. He is the pressure that forces truth out. The show is wise to let him be efficient. We do not need a backstory monologue to fear him. We just need to see how he looks at a man who made a mistake.
The supporting cast deserves a nod. Alison Oliver as Lizzie has the body language of someone who apologizes before she speaks, and then she slowly starts to trust her instincts and you can feel the confidence grow. Fabien Frankel as Grasso brings a smoothness that would be smug in lesser hands, but he lets you see the care underneath the swagger. Thuso Mbedu gives Aleah a power that feels quiet until it is not. She is unflinching and she is also human, which is a tightrope. Martha Plimpton is icy in the exact way a leader has to be when she cannot afford to be anyone’s friend at work. None of them steal focus. They add layers.
So what is Task in the end. It is not a puzzle box. There is no big twist waiting at the finish line that unlocks everything that came before. It is more like a wave that keeps coming. People are angry and sad and guilty and proud. They keep choosing from bad options and hoping they can live with themselves afterward. Sometimes they do. Often they cannot. It will not whip the internet into a frenzy the way a mystery might. It is not designed for that. It is a cleaner piece of drama that asks harder questions and refuses to hold your hand.
It is also a reminder of what happens when a network trusts a writer and a cast and a crew to tell a story with texture. The place feels specific, not generic. The people feel like they have jobs and family and a past that keeps intruding. The crimes feel like they carry consequence. The gunshots sound like they matter. The cops are not superheroes. The criminals are not cartoons. That is worth celebrating.
I did not love every turn. I think a few choices are convenient in a way that lets you feel the outline rather than the blood. I wanted more space for Emilia Jones in the later hours because she gives a real spark early. Those notes do not erase what the show does right. They just mark where it could have been even stronger.
When you watch the premiere, pay attention to how it introduces Tom and Robbie without rushing. Pay attention to how Perry is held back just enough to make you nervous. Pay attention to the way the task force gels, how an office becomes a unit. Then notice how that care keeps paying dividends even when the story speeds up. That is the mark of a series built with intention.
In a season full of splashy releases, Task is the one that sneaks up and sits on your chest. It is quieter than some, louder than others, and truer than most. It is about how three men pull and push each other until the worst parts of them or the best parts of them win. It is about a father who thinks maybe grace is real but also knows that punishment is real too. It is about a thief who wishes he could stop stealing from himself. It is about a leader of a gang who does not pretend to be anything but what he is.
When the credits roll on the last episode, you might not be cheering. You might be sitting very still, thinking about the choice you made once that you cannot take back. Thinking about the person you forgave and the person you did not. That is the kind of show this is. Not a riddle. A mirror, a little bit. And for that alone, it is worth your time. HBO knows how to make this sort of thing. Ingelsby knows how to write it. The cast knows how to play it. The rest of us just have to watch and feel it do what it does.
