Nothing about the trailer for Task feels clean. Not the streets. Not the characters. Not even the justice. In a world where prestige crime dramas get churned out like pharmaceutical ads, HBO’s latest series—the brainchild of Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby—walks into the room wearing a blood-stained hoodie and dares you to look away.
Set in the unvarnished suburbs of Philadelphia, Task casts Mark Ruffalo as a weathered FBI agent leading a task force against a rash of drug-house robberies. His prime target? A seemingly ordinary man named Robbie, played with a haunting quietness by Tom Pelphrey. The twist: Robbie isn’t your average criminal—he’s the guy who looks like he mows your lawn, pays his taxes, and quietly carries the weight of something unspeakable.
“You’re not going to ruin their lives just because you ruined yours.”
— Ruffalo’s character, in what already feels like the show’s thesis line.
The formula is familiar—but the feeling isn’t
We’ve seen cop-vs-criminal dynamics a thousand times—The Wire, True Detective, Mayor of Kingstown. But Task feels less like it’s trying to solve crimes and more like it’s dissecting guilt. It’s less procedural, more personal. Less about who’s breaking the law—and more about who’s already broken inside.
And that’s very on-brand for Brad Ingelsby, whose work (Out of the Furnace, The Way Back, Mare of Easttown) thrives in murky moral waters. His characters rarely have “arcs.” They have spirals. They don’t “grow.” They rot, heal, relapse, and then do it all over again.
Pelphrey: The anti-Breaking Bad?
Tom Pelphrey might be the most compelling casting choice here. Known for his emotionally volatile turn in Ozark, he’s traded that twitchy rage for something subtler—like a kettle on the verge of boiling, not whistling yet, but you know it’s coming. His character feels like a response to the Walter White archetype: not a mastermind, not a monster. Just a man caught between paycheck and pistol.
And Ruffalo? He’s not your charismatic cowboy cop. He looks tired. Not like “I haven’t slept” tired—more like “I haven’t believed in justice since 2003” tired. Which makes him more real than most.
A city that’s not just backdrop—it’s character
Shot on location in Philly, Task uses its setting like a scalpel. Ingelsby understands that crime doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it grows in forgotten corners. Think The Wire’s Baltimore or Mare of Easttown’s Delaware County. Except here, the shadows are even heavier.
“It’s not that Philly hasn’t seen itself on screen—it’s just rarely this raw,” says local filmmaker and critic Isaiah Thomas (not the basketball player).
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
We don’t need more cop shows. But we do need more shows like Task—that challenge why we keep watching them in the first place.
