For director Jeremiah Zagar, returning to Philadelphia after his Philly-set Adam Sandler sports drama Hustle may have been practical, but more importantly, it was an act of intimacy. “Whenever you make a show in your own city, there’s an intimacy that is sort of intrinsic, almost like it’s in your blood,” he says.
Task, HBO’s new crime drama set in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, expands that connection into something raw and familiar. Created by Brad Ingelsby, the limited series follows an FBI agent leading a task force against a string of violent robberies, only to find the suspect is a seemingly ordinary father. It arrives in the shadow of Ingelsby’s earlier triumph, Mare of Easttown, carrying forward the same textured sense of place, working-class intimacy, and moral ambiguity, but expanding its reach into more questions on family, grief, and the choices that fracture lives.
The show’s story is set in neighbourhoods where everyone, as Jeremiah puts it, is “struggling to achieve.” That sense of the constant grind, and the closeness it produces, informs the director’s whole approach. He recalls asking castmates to have breakfast together before stepping into sibling roles and building real bonds before the cameras rolled. “When they get on set and they have to do a scene as brother and sister, it allows them to express a kind of intimacy and a familiarity that they now have because they’ve spent some time together.”
A still from HBO’s ‘Task’
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HBO
Even his directing style mirrors that closeness. He often positions himself just off-camera, close enough for actors to feel his presence. “Actors feed off your energy,” he says. “If you’re close to them and near them and they see how invested you are, they feel comfortable being invested.” The philosophy comes from an unlikely mentor: Quentin Tarantino, who advised Jeremiah during his We the Animals days to stand beside the camera, not behind a monitor.
Ozark star Tom Pelphrey, who plays Robbie, a father torn between love and desperation, was immediately drawn to the story’s emotional core. “When I first read the script, how much Robbie loved his kids is what resonated with me,” he says. That love is the anchor for a character who makes increasingly destructive choices. Tom sees Robbie as a man caught in impossible circumstances, rather than just a criminal. “If you can really construct impossible situations, it forces the audience to observe these things in a different light,” he says.
The violence in the series was not particularly brutal for him, and focused more on communication breaking down. “It comes from running out of other options,” Tom explains. “The frustration erupts into physical violence, which is just the most primal form of trying to get what you need.” Yet he insists Robbie follows his own code. “No one’s going to be seriously injured. No one’s going to get killed. We’re going to take money, but not drugs. There’s a real ethos to what he’s doing.”
Working with children added layers of honesty. Tom laughs at Marlon Brando’s old warning about acting with kids, because “they don’t lie.” He describes playing opposite Samuel, Robbie’s son, as a constant reminder of simplicity. “You have to surrender to just being fully present,” he says. “In between every take, we’re laughing, we’re making jokes, we’re running around. Kids keep the set in a very special place.”
A still from HBO’s ‘Task’
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HBO
As a father himself, Jeremiah understands that closeness as well. “When we’re on set with these kids and Mark [Ruffalo] or Tom is interacting with them, we try to treat the children with the same kind of love that we would want to give to our own children,” he says. “We made sure that was happening so that they felt like they could get close.”
The Philadelphia setting gives the show its backbone. Zagar calls it a city of underdogs, where working-class and middle-class neighbourhoods sit side by side. “There’s a sense of a combined and united struggle,” he says. “Even the sports teams are struggling.” He remembers former Philadelphia 76ers shooting guard Allen Iverson’s brief brush with glory as a kind of city-wide miracle, immediately undercut by defeat. “That’s the thing. My son, he’s 10 years old, he’s constantly reminding me that the Sixers didn’t win that series.”
Tom, who grew up in New Jersey, felt the authenticity while filming in Delaware County. “We are actually in Delco,” he says. “The atmosphere and the air are constantly infused with that energy. I love that energy.” He points to Ingelsby’s script as the key to capturing it: “It’s present on the page.”
House of the Dragon star Fabien Frankel (who we better know as the artful Ser Criston Cole) plays Anthony Grasso, and his preparation began with physicality. “Brad wrote this line, which was one of the first lines about Grasso: he puts out his big paw for Aaliyah to shake. That was such a great description of someone, and to me felt like an easy inroad into the part.” He also underwent police training in East Town with local officers. But ultimately, his approach was about finding humanity. “He’s someone who has gotten himself into an incredibly difficult situation and now doesn’t know how to get out.”
Coming off the Game of Thrones prequel series, Fabian is aware of being cast as morally slippery types. He shrugs: “Admittedly, HBO seemed to only see those kinds of parts. So I take the good where I can get it.” Still, he resists labelling Anthony as untrustworthy. “I never felt that he was untrustworthy. He’s flawed, but Brad writes the why of his questionable actions very clearly.”
A still from HBO’s ‘Task’
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HBO
Irish actor and Conversation with Friends breakout Alison Oliver, who plays Lizzie, approached her character from another angle. “When I first read the script, I just thought she was so funny and endearing,” she says. “I really liked the idea of getting to play a character who isn’t sort of aware of how disruptive she is.” Lizzie’s chaos, she explains, comes partly from a messy divorce and a sense of drifting through life. “By the time you meet her, she brings a lot of baggage.”
Working opposite Fabian gave their dynamic an unpredictability. “I feel like I sort of take on some of your calmness,” she tells him. Fabian agrees: “He’s the most chaotic when he’s with Lizzie. She’s wild. Bringing out all these sides of me.”
Both actors light up when remembering moments of levity on set. Alison recalls the first task force meeting scene, derailed by uncontrollable laughter. “The only takes that are in that scene are the ones where we’re not laughing,” she says. Fabian adds: “If you were to put a camera on any other person not on screen, you’d see them in a deep, profound fit of laughter.”
At the centre of it all is Ingelsby’s writing, which the actors describe with admiration. “He never writes bad people or saints,” Alison says. “They’re all contending with something, and there’s a reason behind why they’re doing what they’re doing.”
Jeremiah frames it in terms of silence. The pauses in Task and the moments between words are what allow these reasons to surface. “I think the most important moments in any television show or movie are the moments of silence,” he says. “I like to let the actors know they’re free to be quiet and free to improvise. And we’re lucky enough that they trust the process.”
This portrait of a series has emerged steeped in place and character, shaped as much by lived-in details as by genre mechanics. Like its predecessor, Task is clearly not all black and white. Or as Tom puts it: “When you can do that, you force a different conversation. You force people to ask: are there horrible people, or are there terrible incentives? Or are there both?”
Task is currently streaming on JioHotstar. New episodes air every Monday
