Patience: Vampire – review

Director: Maarten Moerkerke

First Aired: 2026

Contains spoilers

I think it true to say that, generally, vampires get everywhere and so it wasn’t a shock when Ian contacted me to say that the first season 2 episode of crime drama Patience was entitled Vampire. I was unaware of the show but quickly found out that it is a crime drama, set in York, where the main character Patience (Ella Maisy Purvis) is an autistic woman, working in criminal records, but embroiled in police cases as the detective inspector has discovered how sharp her investigative mind is. I later discovered that this is a remake of a French series, Astrid et Raphaëlle, which is in its sixth season (at time of posting).

Ella Maisy Purvis as Patience

Being unaware of the series, coming in cold as it were, can make it difficult as you are unaware of some of the goings on, the character traits and interactions etc. It is just the hope that the vampire tale is strong enough to carry a genre interest – unfortunately the vampire aspect was not played on as much as it might. It was, I discovered, a time of flux for main character Patience as the DI who drew her in has moved on and the new DI, Frankie Monroe (Jessica Hynes), doesn’t understand why a non-copper is in her meetings and has even less knowledge and understanding of autism.

moody shots of York 

The episode starts with moody shots of York – a perfect setting for Gothic Horror that isn’t exploited really – and then we see a woman, Marina Murray (Jeany Spark) – obviously a riff on Mina Murray – enter a dimly lit photography exhibition. She is looking for artist Jonathan Starper (Julian De Backer) – again a riff, this time on Jonathan Harker – and finds him, with a wooden stake through the chest. She screams.

bites?

When the police are at the crime scene it begins to look like he has been drained of blood and Patience spots the two incisions in his neck – as an aside, these seem to be there and not be there in different shots, I can’t make my mind up whether it was an unfortunate angle thing or just poor continuity. There is commentary around this point around needing garlic. Later the medical examiner ascertains that the wounds were created posthumously and that the blood (which is completely drained) was taken through ankle incisions as he was strung up. It is also discovered that he was blood type Rh-null – the incredibly rare, so-called Golden Blood. This then directs the investigation and there is no further mention of vampires. We do get Patience carrying and returning to the library a copy of Dracula and a medical company, where blood is procured for a sickle cell patient, called Helsing. When the case is cracked, they don’t even return to the posthumous fang marks.

staked

And that is disappointing. There are plenty of vampire related episodes of shows set in the real world that exploit a willingness to believe in vampires – this did not. The vampiric aspect is window dressing and flimsy at that. I actually did enjoy the depiction of Patience, an altercation with a motor bike (its presence unnoticed until a near miss partly because of her noise cancelling headphones) and the nicely done panic attack, showed an insight to autistic reaction. I loved the neurodivergent self-help group we briefly see as they try and navigate a neurotypical world. But the vampire aspect left me disappointed (and that’s impacting the score as I am looking at it from a vampire genre point of view). This is based on a season 3 episode of Astrid et Raphaëlle, which I intend to watch to compare and contrast. 4 out of 10 reflects a lack lustre use of vampires within an otherwise interesting episode.

The imdb page is here.

Honourable Mention: Char Man

I am not massively a fan of the found footage sub-genre of horror, for every one that works there are plenty more that don’t and plenty that leave you with a bad case of the ‘why are they still filming’ blues. Interestingly, Romero’s Diary of the Dead (2007) actually plays with the concept that someone would carry on filming, even in the face of utter horror, in a real and interesting way.

Luckily this is not a vampire found footage film… so, you might ask, why cover it here? Well the film dates to 2019 and was directed by Kurt Ela and Kipp Tribble, who play primary characters Cameron and Eric respectively. They aim to make, with the help of hired camera man Andy (Nick Greco), a documentary about the Ojai Vampire. Ojai is in California and Anthony Hogg covered the (urban) legend here.

driving to Ojai

Anthony tracks the story to a section of Rosemary Ellen Guiley with J.B. Macabre's The Complete Vampire Companion (in a chapter actually written by Martin V. Riccardo) where the story is placed in the 1980s. Later, on Weird California’s Char Man page, the story appears in a side box with the date of the events revised to 1890. Given the same physical location for the two stories (Ojai) and the appearance on the same page, it is not surprising that the filmmakers used both stories as the basis for this flick.

meeting Andy

It is also clear that the story is a modern urban concoction (with, as Anthony points out, some similarities to Curse of the Undead). This, then, makes the fact that characters Eric and Cameron are just going to make up the 'facts' of the documentary seem quite natural. We see them decide he is a toymaker, just so they can use a toy clown Eric has with him, and watch them try to scope a suitable 'vampire' location out (and, apparently, they have brought five pre-constructed and aged coffins with them, to put at the location).

Jeff Kober as Kent Bridewell

Their path changes, however, after they go to meet local historian Kent Bridewell (Jeff Kober, Kindred: the Embraced & Buffy the Vampire Slayer). He tells them the legend of Char Man (or one variant of it, at least) and their interest in the vampire angle wanes so fast its almost supersonic. And the interest the blog has in the film wanes also but I am left with an interesting conundrum – what sort of label do I give this article. It isn’t “belief in vampires” as none of the characters believe and it isn’t “acting as a vampire” as that doesn’t happen either. This would seem to be more of a case of “exploiting vampire legends”, not the first story to do so, but the first time I’ve used the label.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK