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.

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.

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.

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.

Of course the “unlikely duo” is nothing new for TV cop drama either, but in the very overcrowded crime genre field this at least offers something different.

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.

It’s heavy on exposition and light on substance, not only managing to sideline the lead in her own series but stopping short of giving a satisfying resolution to its murders too.