Four-time Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo plays Tom, a former priest turned FBI agent. He’s heading up a task force trying to put an end to a string of violent robberies. Emmy nominee Tom Pelphrey (Ozark) co-stars as Robbie, a garbage collector who is stealing drug money from a local motorcycle gang. 

The stacked cast includes South African star Thuso Mbedu, BAFTA nominee Emilia Jones (CODA), Jamie McShane (Wednesday, 1923), Alison Oliver (Saltburn) and Fabien Frankel (Ser Criston Cole in House of the Dragon).  

Creator Brad Ingelsby set Task in the same working-class Philadelphia suburbs as his four-time Emmy winner predecessor, Mare of Easttown. This is home for him: Brad lives in Chester County, while he and his parents grew up in Delaware County, where his extended family still resides, including his four siblings. 

“I like writing characters and stories set in this region of Pennsylvania,” says Brad. “I wasn’t scared to return to a place I’ve come to know so well because it’s the blood in my veins, and I knew there was more material to mine.”

For help in bringing authenticity to the character, Brad turned to Scott A Duffey, a former seminarian turned FBI agent who is a veteran of several violent crime task forces in suburban Philadelphia.

“The sense of duty and family I observed growing up in Delaware County has become a subject I’m very passionate about,” says Ingelsby. “I’m attracted to stories about working-class people that get up every day and maybe aren’t living the lives they dreamed about or aren’t working the jobs they wanted. But they clock in and out of their shift and provide for their families in ways I’ve always found to be heroic.”

“Brad is a master at telling real stories and Task brings humanity even to the people who are supposed to be criminals,” says two-time Emmy nominee Salli Richardson-Whitfield (The Gilded Age, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakes Dynasty). She directed three episodes, including the pivotal sixth episode, with its 17-minute chase sequence through the woods. “You come to care about both groups of people: the side of law enforcement and the sides that are breaking the law.”

New episodes of Task drop on Showmax every Monday, express from the US.