BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — It is always a reason to celebrate for a series creator when their production becomes a hit. Brad Ingelsby got to feel that joy with his Emmy-nominated “Mare of Easttown.” The task then facing Ingelsby was what to do next as he had established a high bar.
He looked to accomplish the task with “Task.” The HBO Original drama series is now available on the premium service plus the streaming service of HBO Max. New episodes debut weekly.
“Task” is set in the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia where world-weary FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) heads a task force to put an end to a string of violent robberies. Those hits on houses where drugs are being sold are being led by family man Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey).
Part of the creative process for Ingelsby was taken care of when he opted to film the series in the familiar location of Delaware County, PA (known as Delco), and focus again on law and order. The test was to find the right design for the main characters.
“I think it’s always about characters for me. I think everything I’ve written in my life has come from characters,” Ingelsby says. “I knew that probably we couldn’t do a whodunit again. That was the genre of ‘Mare.’ When I came up with the characters for Tom and Robbie, I felt like OK, what’s the engine that’s going to join these guys, or what’s the engine that will carry the audience through the story?
“I felt like maybe the tension can be a collision course. And so, once I started to put those pieces together, I wanted to tell another story in Delco.”
Ingelsby replaced the whodunit element with a cat-and-mouse game between the FBI agent and the thief. That is just the primary thread as both characters are dealing with numerous levels of pressure especially when it comes to family.
Making the characters complicated is how Ingelsby looks to get the audience to sympathise with all the characters even when they are at their worst.
“It’s, hey, how do we scratch under the surface? And when we do scratch under surface, what’s there? How do we make that honest and authentic? So, I think that’s a goal that I try to achieve as a writer,” Ingelsby says.
The series creator knew the only way that would work is if he found the right cast. Along with Ruffalo and Pelphrey, the cast of “Task” includes Emilia Jones, Jamie McShane, Sam Keeley, Thuso Mbedu, Fabien Frankel, Alison Oliver, Raúl Castillo, Silvia Dionicio, Phoebe Fox, and Martha Plimpton.
Pelphrey was blown away by the scripts, but he had to put his enthusiasm on hold when a strike delayed the start of production. He was excited when he finally got to bring to life the characters Ingelsby had created.
He has heard Ingelsby give credit to the cast for making the project work, but he counters that the heart of the show is Ingelsby’s writing.
“When I watched it, I thought everybody’s work was exceptional. And that happens when there’s beautiful writing. That’s the only time that every actor is elevated and that’s what Brad provides,” Pelphrey says. “It doesn’t surprise me that the actors are better in something that he wrote because he starts from character, so every single character has a strong why.”
The New Jersey-born actor understands good writing having worked on such projects as “Ozark,” “Iron Fist” and “Outer Range.” The biggest challenge for him was to make sure his New Jersey accent didn’t slip in when speaking as the Pennsylvania criminal.
Emilia Jones had an even bigger accent hurdle as she was born in London. She found trying to get the accent right a tough task but also a lot of fun. Jones worked with a dialect coach, Susanne Sulby, who put her through lessons via Zoom for five months.
“Then I flew out to Philly two weeks before we started shooting and Susanne and I would go around to bars in Delaware County and just listen in to people talking and befriend the locals,” Jones says. “I just have loads of videos, recordings on my phone of how people from Delco speak.
“It was really fun though, because it’s not just an accent, it’s an energy that I noticed from when I was going around bars.”
Both had accent struggles but there was no difficulty with the filming location. Both actors praise the attention to detail by the crew to houses that were located in Delaware County where they filmed.
Jones loved the filming location because it felt so authentic.
“And it’s always nice when you get to film where exactly the show or film is set and it really helped me with the accent and the energy and just being there,” Jones says.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KGET 17 News.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
