Critic Reviews

The more convoluted the cases, the more the young woman’s talents can be put on display. But, as in many memorable detective stories, it is the characters and relationships that separate the petty larceny of one’s time from the grand theft of one’s full attention.

As always, the plots are there almost as a pretext to spend time with the characters, and the whole cast is good company. But Purvis especially, in spite of Patience’s self-containment, radiates quiet charisma — new-star power. A second season, happily, is already on the cards.

The tension between her undeniable talent and her understandable insecurities makes Patience a winner in its first six-episode season, with a second season underway.

Bea and Patience carry the show, while the rest of the ensemble is just sort of there. .... The cases themselves are interesting enough and sometimes pivot around an amusing premise.

The term used to describe this kind of show is often “cozy,” but it doesn’t quite fit here. No one is getting bundled up in a warm blanket and having a cup of tea to discuss the case. But there is something cozy about its vision of a world of people who strive so much to appreciate and understand someone who’s different from them.

Although the focus on them might come at the expense of other characters getting the development that they deserve, Patience and Bea's relationship is what leads the Season 1 finale to wrap up on a high note, adding to the anticipation of a continuation of Patience's arc.

Patience shows that its title character’s autism is an asset rather than a problem, and while there are time when Bea is a little flummoxed by Patience’s habits and routines, the show more often than not shows what a neurodivergent person can bring to a complex job like policing.

Patience continues to be an effective mystery series because of Ella Maisy Purvis’ portrayal of a person who is on the autism spectrum who puts her abilities to use in the best way she knows how.

While the series opener did lean into a number of cop caper clichés (the hard-nosed female detective, the dismissive male boss who refuses to listen to her), it’s Patience herself – and Purvis’s electric performance – that makes this Patience worth sticking with.

The murders are appropriately baroque for this sort of Euro-procedural, while Fraser and Purvis are always watchable, even if the premise begins to wear thin as the series evolves.