It is not new for television drama to link neurodiversity to an ability to solve crime (cf Sherlock; Professor T; to a certain extent Ludwig). But it does feel new to cast an autistic actor in the lead role.
Ella Maisy Purvis gives a fresh and convincing performance in Patience (Channel 4) as a neurodiverse young woman working in a dry, lonely job in a police force’s “paper mountain” archives who spots links between seemingly unconnected cases that others haven’t. You might expect her to be convincing because she has autism.
However, it would be easy to “overact” the condition, which Purvis doesn’t as the titular Patience, showing it in overt and subtle ways. Patience has to rehearse the conversations she is
