After the success of Mare of Easttown, the HBO limited series that starred Kate Winslet and won three Emmys, creator Brad Ingelsby says he experienced a bit of anxiety when it came to starting a new project.
"I was really nervous about it," Ingelsby says. "It's always scary to put yourself out there and put something on paper that you share with people."
But eventually two voices refused to leave him alone.
"Sometimes you get these characters in your head, and the only way to get them out, or have them stop pestering you, is to write them."
Those characters became FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo) and struggling family man Robbie Pendergrass (Tom Pelphrey), the central figures of HBO's Task. What makes Task different from other crime shows is that Ingelsby never approached the series as a traditional hero-versus-villain story.
Two Heroes, No Villains
Many writers would describe Tom Brandis as the protagonist in Task and Robbie Pendergrass as the antagonist. But not Ingelsby.
"I really viewed them as the two heroes of the show," he says.
He looked to Michael Mann's Heat for inspiration. Just as audiences root for both the detective played by Al Pacino and the criminal played by Robert De Niro, Ingelsby wanted viewers to be invested in both sides of the conflict.
"The tension of this show was that we really like both guys. We care about each of them," he says. "The tension would come from knowing that they were getting closer and closer to a collision."
Embrace Contradictions
One of the reasons the character Robbie works so well is that he's full of contradictions. He's a loving father who can also commit acts of shocking violence.
"He can go into a drug house and be incredibly violent," Ingelsby says. "He can steal from these people. He can tie them up and smash them in the face with his gun. And he can be really gentle with his child."
Ingelsby doesn't try to justify Robbie's violent actions. Instead, he encourages writers to embrace the two extremes.
"Many things can be true at the same time, and that's what makes us human. It's not being afraid to have characters who are inconsistent and as a viewer, I think it connects us to a character in a deeper way."
Character Creates Story
The character of Tom Brandis emerged from an unusual idea: an FBI agent who was once a priest.
Ingelsby drew inspiration from his own family, which includes several priests. "I had two great uncles who were diocesan priests and then my uncle, my mom's older brother, Ed, he was an Augustinian priest for many years. He left the priesthood a while ago, then met a woman, and got married."
He also consulted with FBI advisors who told him that clergy sometimes assist law enforcement following mass-casualty events. What interested him most, however, was creating an investigator whose greatest strength wasn't detective work.
Ingelsby says he would jokingly tell actor Mark Ruffalo, "You're not really that good of an FBI agent. Your superpower is your point of view, your empathy, your ability to talk to people in crisis." That empathy becomes the foundation of the series.
Finding Theme Through Character
While Task is structured as a crime drama, Ingelsby sees something deeper underneath it.
"I felt like this was a story about faith. At least, that's kind of where the story started. I wanted to create a character where everything he believed as truth in his life has come crumbling down. Tom and his wife felt called by God to adopt these kids, and then adopting these kids has caused the great tragedy of his life. What kind of God is that? I don't understand the suffering, you know? And I ask those kinds of questions all the time."
Rather than giving Tom a simple religious awakening, Ingelsby built an arc around rediscovering belief in human goodness. By the end of the series, that renewed faith allows Tom to make a difficult and selfless choice. For Ingelsby, that emotional transformation was always more important than solving the case. It's another example of a pattern that runs throughout his work: a high-stakes plot may bring audiences in, but character and theme are what give a story lasting impact.
Write What You Care About
When asked what advice he would give aspiring television writers, Ingelsby shares a lesson he's been touting for years: don't chase trends.
He says too many writers see a hit movie or series and immediately decide to write something similar. By the time the script is finished, the industry has already moved on. Instead, he says writers should focus on the stories that genuinely excite them.
"What never loses its value as I read scripts is the passion that comes through in the writing," Ingelsby says. "That's only there if the writer cares about the characters and the story." It's fitting advice from a writer whose latest series began with two voices in his head that wouldn’t leave him alone until he wrote them down.
Discovering Final Draft in Grad School
Though he earned a business degree as an undergraduate, it was his lifelong love of movies that gave him the courage to attend film school at AFI. He admits he didn't know much about writing scripts at the time.
"It's funny because I went to graduate school, and I didn't really have any experience. I was writing scripts in Microsoft Word. I was just looking stuff up online and I got to my first week in graduate school, my teacher was like, 'Dude, you really have to get a screenwriting program.' I think he had a copy of Final Draft and I've been using it ever since."
Task was written in Final Draft. The show is currently streaming on HBO Max, with season two currently in production.