<em>Task</em> Looks Exactly Like the Sort of HBO Crime Drama We've Desperately Missed

Are youse ready for fall TV season? Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby will return for another Pennsylvania crime drama on HBO this September titled Task, featuring even more Delco slang than before. As a native of the Keystone State, I’ll admit that everyone on Mare of Easttown sounded quite normal to me. But I’m allowed to say that—even as I acknowledge that wooter is not the preferred pronunciation of water.

Mark Ruffalo (Mickey 17) will try on the accent to lead the upcoming series. His character, an FBI agent named Tom, leads a new task force to hunt down a band of masked robbers who are committing violent home invasions around the area. Fabien Frankel (House of the Dragon), Alison Oliver (Conversations with Friends), and Thuso Mbedu (The Underground Railroad) round out the task force, as they search for the man (Outer Range’s Tom Pelphrey) who leads the robberies.

"I play a young detective with the most Philly slang out of everyone, because I’m from South Philly," Frankel told Esquire last July. "I talk about Angelo’s broccoli rabe. I'm doing a Wawa run every day. I mean, I’m right in the thick of all the Philly references."

HBO has yet to announce an official release date for Task, but the crime drama is set to premiere sometime this September. In the first teaser (above), Ruffalo and his team trudge through the creeks— or the cricks, as we call it—in search of these violent offenders. “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses plays as Pelphrey’s character explains that he’s long prayed for an answer to his problems, but has never received a response. “All I’ve got in return Is silence,” he says.

There’s certainly a True Detective feeling to the first preview, alongside a version of the Pennsylvania county pictured much like its recent setting in Apple TV+’s Dope Thief. Still, something tells me that Task’s manhunt plot isn’t so cut-and-dry. For now, we’ll be back in Delco for Task when the series begins this September.