The most Catholic TV show of 2025 is a gritty crime drama set outside of Philadelphia. HBO’s “Task,” which recently concluded its seven-episode run, was a tale of cops and robbers, with a gang of vicious bikers thrown in for good measure. It was, as you might expect, tense and exciting and often very dark. But amidst all of that darkness, “Task” was also a surprising meditation on morality, forgiveness and grace.

This will come as no surprise to viewers of creator Brad Ingelsby’s first hit, the HBO miniseries “Mare of Easttown” (2021). Set in Philadelphia’s Delaware County suburbs and starring Kate Winslet as the titular vaping detective (in a performance that earned her an Emmy), the series was praised for Ingelsby’s incisive and complex characters and its rich sense of place (which briefly made Philly cultural signifiers a topic of national conversation, much to the amusement of those of us who grew up with them). 

“Mare of Easttown” could be as grim as any other crime drama and was clear-eyed about the reality of sin, especially within families. But it was also shot through with a battered, resilient Catholicism. Mare’s brother was a priest, characters still identified themselves by the parish they attended growing up, and even the atheists and agnostics carried some Catholic guilt around with them. It was there in more subtle ways as well. The series, tellingly, ended not with Mare getting justice, but with her offering forgiveness.

“Task” returns to DelCo (giving more great actors from all over the world a chance to pronounce “water” as “wooder”) and ups the moral complexity of its predecessor, telling a story of essentially well-meaning characters struggling to do the right thing in a series of impossible situations. It can be grim, violent and very sad. But it’s also full of fragile, surprising grace.

The title refers to an F.B.I. task force assembled to investigate a series of robberies of DelCo drug houses owned by the Dark Hearts biker gang. Leading it is Special Agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), a father reeling from a tragic act of violence that shattered his family. Tom is disillusioned, drinks too much and has a strained relationship with his teenage daughter, Emily (Silvia Dionicio). The orchestrator of the robberies is another single father, Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey), a garbage collector who has taken on this dangerous extracurricular activity to make ends meet. (Robbie also has a personal reason for targeting the Dark Hearts, but we don’t learn it right away). Despite stealing money from people at gunpoint, Robbie isn’t a bad guy—but he has a talent for making bad decisions.

When one of the robberies goes horribly wrong, leaving four people dead and a child missing, Tom and Robbie are set on a collision course. What plays out isn’t your typical story of cops and robbers, good versus evil. Instead, we see people struggling to do good—or the closest approximation thereof—in a tragically broken world.

Like “Mare of Easttown,” this story is told with a distinctly Catholic sensibility. Tom is a former priest who left religious life to start a family. He once served the F.B.I. as a chaplain, offering spiritual counsel after mass casualty events. “When things go terribly wrong, people want to know why God let it happen,” he says.

Now, decades later, Tom’s life has gone terribly wrong and he has lost his faith. Talking to a friend from seminary, he says he can’t even stomach reading the Catholic theology that was once the center of his life: “No more Rohr, or Rahner, or Merton, or Augustine. I ain’t buying any of this s*** they’re selling, anyway.” He doesn’t seem offended by the idea of God (in fact, one of the first things we see Tom do in the series is— semi-begrudgingly—get on his knees and pray), but by the church’s claim to provide answers to life’s existential mysteries.

There’s a lot of that going around. Anthony Grasso (Fabien Frankel), a detective on the task force, admits to Tom that despite being dragged to Mass every Sunday by his mother growing up (and a past working as a D.J. at Catholic girls’ school dances) that Catholicism “never made an ounce of sense to me.” (Still, when he asks Tom about his life as a priest, you sense that he wishes he could understand it; Grasso also probably has the most developed case of Catholic guilt in the series.) Robbie is even more blunt when the topic of faith arises: “I never once felt God in my life,” he says, opining that people only cling to faith to stave off the existential fear that “there’s nothing after this.”

But Catholic characters aren’t solely what makes “Task” a Catholic show. More significantly, it is in how Ingelsby (the series’ sole credited writer, though he shares story credits with David Obzud) draws his characters—on both sides of the law—with compassion, depth and a basic capacity for goodness, even in desperate situations. The entire series has a sacramental worldview, which might sound contradictory when it is so focused on the profane. But the characters are all grasping for something higher, striving for an ideal that they may not be able to articulate but clearly believe in nonetheless. 

Tom and Robbie find wonder and rootedness in the natural world, and all of our protagonists are defined by their relationships to others, the ways that they are willing to sacrifice for the people they love. Tom’s task force seems lackluster at first, but its members—especially fumbling rookie Lizzie (Alison Oliver) and brusque survivor Aleah (Thuso Mbedu)—reveal secret depths and virtues. Robbie’s niece Maeve (Emilia Jones), a 20-something with a dead-end job at an arcade and no college degree, is arguably the most morally courageous character on the show, putting her love into action in extraordinary ways. Even the series’ antagonists, vicious bikers Jayson (Sam Keeley) and Perry (Jamie McShane), are ultimately motivated by love.

Ingelsby provides “Task” with its Catholic bona fides: he was raised in the faith, attending Archbishop Carroll High School and Villanova University, and working at a Catholic grade school for a year after graduation. You see it not only in all of the Catholic “Easter Eggs” sprinkled throughout his stories but in the deep compassion he has for his characters, even when they make terrible choices.

What makes “Task” so compelling isn’t the shootouts or the investigations, but the moral choices that characters have to make moment-to-moment. Each character is accountable to his or her own conscience—another way that the series resonates with the Catholic worldview. Ultimately, they each must decide if they can live with the consequences of violating their conscience, or to pay the cost of following it. 

This may sound like moral relativism, but it’s more complicated—and Catholic—than that. “Task” returns again and again to rivers, a place where characters both connect and part ways (because it’s a crime show, several characters end up floating facedown in them, as well). The river also serves as the series’ central metaphor. It is both shifting and constant, ever-changing and eternal. The characters of “Task” believe in something, no matter what they say: They are each guided by an inner compass, pointing them toward the good. But they often find themselves in situations with no good options—as we all do in this fallen world. 

You can never step into the same river twice, they say, and “the right thing” may change depending on the circumstances. In “Task,” what’s most important is figuring out the right place to stand now, in this moment, and having the courage to step into the waters.

“Task” is now streaming in its entirety on HBO Max.