“ Task ,” Brad Ingelsby’s follow-up to “ Mare of Easttown ,” starts out like a slice-of-life drama before erupting in explosive violence in the last half of its first episode.
Viewers are introduced to Tom Brandis, a former priest-turned-FBI agent, played by a paunchy Mark Ruffalo. He’s struggling — drinking too much and sleeping too little — clearly haunted by a tragedy that Ingelsby has yet to fully reveal (though it’s known his son is in prison). Tom doesn’t seem too interested in his job. He’s on career fair duty, until he grudgingly gets assigned to run a task force to look into a string of robberies targeting the drug houses of a motorcycle gang called the Dark Hearts. And your ears don’t deceive you — the characters in “Task” speak with the same regional Pennsylvania honk as th