'Something Emotionally Honest': Why HBO's 'TASK' Is More Than Just A Crime Thriller

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times)

When Brad Ingelsby tells a story, it never sits neatly in a box. His Emmy-winning Mare of Easttown was more than a murder mystery; it was a tapestry of small-town grief and resilience. With TASK, his latest HBO original now streaming weekly on OSN+ in the UAE, Ingelsby returns to his native Pennsylvania with another tale that crackles with suspense but bleeds with humanity.

On paper, the premise sounds familiar: an FBI agent, Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), hunts down a crew of thieves led by Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), a garbage collector turned criminal. But Ingelsby isn't interested in good guys and bad guys. He's interested in people - flawed, desperate, sometimes reckless - who are just trying to hold their families together.

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“It is a cat and mouse, but I think it's also a drama about lives under pressure, people who are backed into a corner, who don't have choices,” Ingelsby said during a virtual press conference.“I hope that as an audience you don't have to agree with all the decisions that are being made on screen, but you can understand why they're being made.”

That word - empathy - keeps coming up whenever TASK is discussed. Ruffalo's Tom is a former priest whose faith has crumbled after personal tragedy, while Pelphrey's Robbie is driven to crime by grief and love for his fractured family. Both men, Ingelsby notes, are motivated by the same values, even as they find themselves on opposite sides of the law.

The human truth beneath the thriller

For Jeremiah Zagar, who directed the pilot, episodes 2, 5, and the finale, the challenge wasn't balancing genres so much as staying true to the script's dual heartbeat.“The crime had to feel brutal and true. And the family drama had to feel intimate and real,” he told City Times in a virtual roundtable conversation.“As long as you honoured the truth that was on the page, and the actors did the same, and the DP, the production design and the costumes were authentic, we felt like we were going to be okay. I think we did okay.”

The authenticity extended to the performances. Emilia Jones, who plays Maeve, Robbie's niece, immersed herself in Delaware County's distinct rhythm.“It's not just an accent, it's like an energy,” she recalled of her prep, which involved spending time in local bars and befriending residents.“I just kept rewatching Mare of Easttown because I felt like I couldn't listen to any other accents. I think I'm still getting Delco notes now,” she laughed.

Her co-star Sylvia Dionicio, who plays Emily, Tom's adopted teenage daughter, had one of the series' most piercing lines - asking if she was“only allowed to feel gratitude.” That moment, she explained, drew from a painful truth about adopted children.“A lot of kids who are adopted, conscious or unconsciously, have this feeling of always having to be grateful, or wanting to be perfect in case... you don't want to be sent back,” she told City Times in a virtual roundtable conversation.“It's complicated. It's very layered. And Brad really didn't shy away from that.”

To help the cast tap into those layers, production even brought a therapist on set. It gave Dionicio tools to navigate Emily's inner conflict, while her scenes opposite Ruffalo often leaned into unpredictability. She said,“Mark loves improv, he really does. He loves a prop. He'll just pick something up, and you have to go with it. I loved it - it was such a nice challenge.”

Finding the personal

For both Pelphrey and Jones, working on TASK was less about inventing backstory and more about surrendering to Ingelsby's writing.“So often you have to go off on your own and you're doing back flips in the dark to tell yourself some dream story about why you're doing what you're doing,” Pelphrey said.“But then Brad gives it to you, and not just gives it to you, but shares it in the story, in the dynamics the audience can see. It allows for complexity.”

Jones agreed. She said,“I would always leave the scene going, 'Wow, I didn't know that was going to happen,' or that I'd go to that level of emotion or anger. I just found myself leaving scenes surprised - and I think that's the best feeling.”

She later added that there was not much need to improvise, except for the unpredictability that came with working with kids. "So there was always different things being thrown around and you kind of just had to react," she said. "And Tom and I occasionally would change a few things just like in the moment. But there was just no need because Brad's such a phenomenal writer. There was no way I could have possibly said anything better."

Finding something that is emotionally honest

That spirit of surprise, of unpredictability, is baked into the DNA of TASK. Ingelsby describes it not as a whodunnit like Mare, but as a“collision course” between two men whose values are uncomfortably similar. Both Tom and Robbie want to protect their families, both are haunted by grief, and both wrestle with questions of faith and morality. The tragedy, of course, is that their goals cannot coexist.

So, we asked if the challenge of TASK was less about good versus evil and more about asking the audience to empathise with characters involved even when they are at their most flawed?

"I think it's something that as a writer you're always trying to modulate," Ingelsby said. "It's possible for many things to exist. And I think that's what we're trying to do with the characters; not to paint someone as good or bad, but to understand how these decisions are made. As a team, we were always trying to lead with compassion and empathy for every character."

Ruffalo had sad earlier:“There's no excuse for breaking the law and hurting people, but Tom comes to see Robbie as something more than a common criminal. They become emotionally entwined and find themselves caring for one another in unexpected ways.”

Ingelsby is always trying to get to the heart of such complex characters because, in his life, he finds "people are really complex," and how can he, as a writer, scratch under the surface.

And when he does, he wants to find something and make it honest and authentic. "That's what we're always after," he said, "something that's emotionally honest."

That's the paradox at the heart of TASK. It's a thriller with biker gangs, violent robberies, and FBI task forces, but it's also about daughters asking if they're allowed to feel more than gratitude, about nieces putting their lives on hold to keep a broken family afloat, about a grieving priest who no longer knows what to believe.

These things are what turn a cat-and-mouse thriller into something far richer: a story about how far we'll go for family, and how dangerous the line between right and wrong can be when grief pushes you to the edge.

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