In the second season of the PBS/Channel 4 mystery series Patience, police records clerk Patience Evans continues to use the skills that her neurodivergence brings to murder investigations for the York Police. But now her biggest champion on the force is gone, replaced by a detective that’s skeptical of how she can help.
PATIENCE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A castle in the old city part of York. A woman in red walks along the old city’s walls towards the castle, where she finds a man’s body amongst a display of his photographs.
The Gist: As we see a motorcycle ride through York, Patience Evans (Ella Maisy Purvis) contemplates the number code that was written on the label of a box her late mother wanted her to have. As Patience, who is autistic, walks through the streets with her noise-cancelling headphones on, she’s almost run over by the motorcycle.
She goes to the castle, where the body of photographer Jonathan Starper (Julian de Backer) is lying; he has a chair leg in his chest but there is little blood around him. He also has two incisions in his neck. At the crime scene, she runs into foresnsics tech Elliot Scott (Tom Lewis); she has an idea that he likes her, but has trouble reading the subtle signs of that.
When she gets back to the police station — where she works as a records clerk, but would help the detectives with investigations — she meets DI Frankie Monroe (Jessica Hynes), who was the one on the motorcycle. She’s replacing DI Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser), who trusted Patience’s instincts; Patience and Metcalf grew close during their time working together.
The brusque Monroe doesn’t want Patience, who is not a cop, anywhere near the Starper case, despite the insights and attention to detail Patience provides. This is despite DS Jake Hunter (Nathan Welsh), who has come to trust Patience’s insights, telling Monroe that Patience helps them break cases. Monroe’s response is that just means that Hunter and his partner, DC Will Akbari (Ali Ariaie), aren’t doing their jobs.
Despite Monroe’s doubts about Patience, she continues to look into Starper’s murder, including going to the scene and finding the chair that the leg that was embedded in his chest came from, which leads her to tell Hunter and Monroe that he likely fell onto the chair, which was in a dumpster below the second story of the hollowed-out structure.
In the meantime, Patience has to figure out life without Metcalf, she turns to her neurodivergent support group for advice on how to read Elliot’s signals, and tries to figure out why and how Starper’s blood was drained after he died.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we said during its first season, Patience, created by Matt Baker and based on the French series Astrid et Raphaëlle, is a cross between The Good Doctor and Elementary.
Our Take: The reason why Patience works so well is that Patience Evans’ autism is portrayed in a much more real-life way than we’ve seen in other series, most notably the aforementioned The Good Doctor. Patience isn’t some robotic, unfeeling person. Like many on the spectrum, Patience’s autism is evident in the way she reads people, and in how she is highly organized and detail-oriented. She takes things literally and likes to follow rules. She can get overwhelmed and shut down, and she can also have panic attacks when stressed. But she is also determined to get past obstacles and difficulties.
That’s what is going to be in play in the show’s second season (it’s already been renewed for a third), because her biggest ally, Metcalf is gone and her replacement, Monroe, has doubts. She’s not at all subtle about them, either, insultingly calling Patience, “Headphones,” for instance, when Patience goes down to the morgue at the behest of the medical examiner.
Jessica Hynes’s Monroe is definitely going to bring an interesting dynamic to the series, and not just because she doesn’t think Patience should be involved in their murder investigations. Metcalf was a tough detective but open to Patience’s methods of working, and working with Patience also gave her insight into her own son’s possible neurodivergence. There are hints that Monroe has a history that’s pretty much the opposite of Metcalf’s, which is why Patience is going to have a tough time proving herself to Monroe throughout the season.
But what is the best part of Patience’s characterization is that she’s undeterred by Monroe’s insults and dismissals, just as she’s determined to start something romantic with Elliot despite a communication gap, or plugs away trying to figure out what the numbers mean on the box her mom left her. That’s the part that keeps us watching, even if the mysteries she helps solve each week are less than involving.
Performance Worth Watching: Ella Maisy Purvis, who herself is autistic, brings a realistic portrayl of someone with ASD as Patience. She is not playing her with a blank expression and monotone voice, which is a breath of fresh air and certainly echoes the experience of anyone who has someone in their family who is on the spectrum.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Patience and Elliot leave the police station together. She gives him a cactus and invites him to go with her to the library, though they can only chat on the way there, since talking isn’t allowed inside the library walls.
Sleeper Star: Nathan Welsh has a tough job as DS Jake Hunter this season, as he is basically the conduit between Patience and Monroe. We’ll likely see him holding in what he really wants to say to his new boss a lot this season.
Most Pilot-y Line: “I know Detective Metcalf thought highly of you, but I’m not her,” Monroe says to Patience. She definitely showed that throught the first case she worked, so it didn’t need to be said.
Our Call: STREAM IT. 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.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.