How Much of HBO's Task Is Actually True? Here's the Real Story Behind the Series
Mark Ruffalo stars as a troubled FBI agent in HBO's latest must-watch, but the wildest twists aren't just TV magic—here's how real-life Philly crime inspired the show's most shocking moments.
Spoilers for HBO's Task below!
HBO has a type, and I mean that as a compliment: messy crime stories that double as character studies. Task fits right in. It is a limited series from Brad Inglesby (Mare of Easttown), it is set in the Philadelphia suburbs, and it is less about the case file than the people living in the blast radius.
What is Task actually about?
Mark Ruffalo plays Tom Brandis, a former priest turned FBI agent who is now a single dad and a functioning alcoholic. Not exactly a poster boy for chain of command. In the pilot, his boss (Martha Plimpton) drops a headache in his lap: lead a brand-new task force to stop a wave of violent home invasions. The targets are drug houses. The robbers wear Halloween masks, storm in, tie everyone up, and sweep the cash. The fallout is ugly. Rival crews strike back, and the body count starts to climb.
We already know who is behind the masks. Tom Pelphrey is Robbie, a trash collector who is also a single father, just in a different kind of freefall. His wife, Karen, split. He technically lives in his 21-year-old niece Maeve's (Emilia Jones) house — she inherited it after Robbie's brother died — and Maeve is doing more child-wrangling than she should. Robbie pulls the jobs with his best friends, Cliff and Peaches, and the plan is as brutal as it is methodical.
Episode 1: Crossings
The premiere ends with everything going sideways. A robbery goes disastrously wrong, Peaches is killed, and Robbie and Cliff suddenly find themselves responsible for an unexpected fourth kid. Yes, that is as chaotic as it sounds.
As of the first hour, Brandis and Robbie have not met, but the show makes it clear they are two sides of the same story: both damaged dads, one chasing the crimes, one committing them. To use creator Brad Inglesby's own phrase, they are on a 'collision course.' The action hits, but the best moments are the quiet ones about faith, fatherhood, masculinity, and what duty even means when your life is on fire.
The real-life thread running through it
Task is not a ripped-from-the-headlines retelling. It is pulled from people and ideas Inglesby knows, which is why it feels grounded instead of gimmicky.
Tom Brandis has a very specific inspiration: Inglesby's uncle.
"He left the priesthood...and me being very interested in that idea of faith and his relationship to faith, and that idea of sort of having faith and losing faith, and that really informs Mark's character in the show and what his view of faith is in the midst of this tragedy."
Robbie came from a different kind of real-world observation — the people we overlook. Inglesby said a chat with a technical advisor cracked something open:
"The people that actually know the most about you and are the most invisible are our mailmen...and trash men because they're going through your trash every week...I feel like we hadn't seen it before, a trash man who was involved in this scheme."
Inside baseball note: Inglesby also consulted with the FBI while shaping how both the investigation and the criminals operate. That mix — personal history plus process nerding — is very Mare of Easttown, and it shows.
Who is who
- Mark Ruffalo as Tom Brandis: ex-priest, now an FBI agent, single father, and an alcoholic tasked with leading a green task force
- Tom Pelphrey as Robbie: garbageman, single dad running the masked robberies; lives in niece Maeve's inherited house
- Emilia Jones as Maeve: 21-year-old niece left the house after her father's death; unofficial caregiver in Robbie's chaos
- Martha Plimpton as Brandis's captain: she hands him the task force and the headache
- Cliff and Peaches: Robbie's closest friends and partners in the heists; Peaches dies after the botched job
- Karen: Robbie's estranged wife who left him with the kids
- Jamie McShane as Perry
The basics if you want to watch
Task is a seven-episode crime drama created by Brad Inglesby and directed by Jeremiah Zagar. New episodes drop Sunday nights on HBO, and the series is streaming on HBO Max.