COLLISION course

Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey square up in a classy cat-and-mouse thriller

- HANNAH DAVIES.

Best known for playing The Hulk in the Avengers film franchise, Mark Ruffalo ditches the green giant this week to star as a grizzled and greying FBI agent in Sky Atlantic crime drama Task.

From writer Brad Ingelsby, the creator of Mare of Easttown, and set in the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia, the gritty seven-parter sees Ruffalo play beleaguered, heavy-drinking father Tom Brandis.

Tom is still grappling with the fallout of his wife's sudden death and struggling to mend his fractured relationships with his children – biological daughter Sara (Phoebe Fox) and adopted daughter Emily (Silvia Dionicio) – when he's forced back into the field by his bureau chief (Martha Plimpton) to set up a task force investigating a string of drug-den robberies.

'Tom is emotionally shut down in the aftermath of his wife's death six months before the story opens,' explains Ruffalo, 57. 'Parenting doesn't come naturally to Tom, but then something is reignited in him that allows him to be the father he could never be before tragedy struck.'