Mark Ruffalo leads 'Mare of Easttown' creator's new HBO crime series 'Task': Michael Mann's 'Heat' said to be an inspiration
HBO announced a new series titled Task, starring Mark Ruffalo, from Brad Ingelsby, the creator of the Mare of Easttown. The news comes immediately after the streamer announced that they were reverting to the previous title HBO Max.
Ruffalo plays Tom, a senior FBI agent assigned to a task force investigating a series of violent robberies, nine cases of home invasions to be specific, perpetrated by — and this is no spoiler — an ordinary man for a change, played by Tom Pelphrey. In the trailer, we can see that Tom has no say in who gets to be part of the task force since the orders come from the top, and he is seemingly unhappy with the young and inexperienced members chosen to work under him.
The footage hints at a storytelling approach followed in the Kate Winslet-led Mare of Easttown, in which we get a sense of the Philadelphia suburbs and the principal characters and their family members that make up the working-class community. Task, also set in the same place, seems to be going for a multi-perspective, layered exploration of the motivations of Pelphrey's antagonist Robbie, who is revealed to be a family man himself. "You're not gonna ruin their lives just because they ruined yours," he is told by a woman, supposedly his partner.
The idea for the show reportedly comes from a close family member of Ingelsby, a former priest who in the past has helped the FBI solve some cases. Ingelsby, who serves as the creator, writer, and showrunner, has also cited Michael Mann's 1995 crime epic Heat as an inspiration.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ingelsby said about the parallels to the Al Pacino-Robert De Niro film: “It was a collision course of these two men, and you loved and cared about both of them. And you knew those things couldn't coexist. That is the tension of the movie: When are they going to collide? And when they collide, what’s going to happen?”
HBO has shared that they are aiming for a September release window.
Pelphrey, who made a strong impression in Netflix's Ozark, co-starring Jason Bateman, has been part of shows like Banshee and Outer Range Season 2; films like Love & Death (with Elizabeth Olsen) and A Man In Full (with Jeff Daniels).
Other Task cast members include Emilia Jones, Thuso Mbedu, Raul Castillo, Jamie McShane, Sam Keeley, Fabien Frankel, Alison Oliver, Owen Teague, Raphael Sbarge, Mireille Enos, and Martha Plimpton.
Ruffalo was last seen in Bong Joon-Ho's sci-fi satire Mickey 17 and the Netflix miniseries All the Light We Cannot See. It must be noted that Ruffalo and HBO previously collaborated for the intense, character-driven miniseries I Know This Much Is True, in which the actor played identical twins.
Given the list of promising names involved in Task, it is expected to do wonders for HBO, a platform with a long history of prestige shows such as The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and Succession. Meanwhile, they have dropped another new series Duster, a 1970s-set crime thriller starring Josh Holloway, co-created by filmmaker JJ Abrams, on May 15. Holloway and Abrams have previously worked together in the hit series Lost.
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