'Astrid' Season 4 Leads Off 2025 'Walter Presents' Slate on PBS Passport

Astrid (Astrid et Raphaëlle) was a hit right out of the gate when it first debuted on PBS Passport in November 2022 as part of that month's Walter Presents slate. In fact, it proved so popular that Walter Presents rushed to bring Season 2 in the spring of 2023, which then aired as a weekly show on select PBS stations that fall. Since then, the series has become a yearly premiere, with new seasons arriving as part of the wintertime slate just over a year after they conclude on France 2. Season 4 will continue this tradition, coming in January 2025 as the first show of the year to kick off the Walter Presents lineup.

A feminized French twist on the Sherlock Holmes format, the series stars Lola Dewaere as the outgoing and impulsive Commander Raphaëlle Coste and Sara Mortensen as the high-functioning autistic documentalist Astrid Nielsen. Astrid is the Holmesian observer with an uncanny knack for solving crimes, and Raphaëlle is the inspector who brings her along, making this an old-school odd-couple cop show.

Astrid has become so popular in the U.S. and U.K., where it streams on More4, that it was selected to be the next Walter Presents series to get an English language remake, joining previous Walter Presents hits like Professor T, Before We Die, The Couple Next Door, and Bad Sisters. Reset from Paris to the York countryside; the English version has been retitled Patience (notably still titled after the same character, now named Patience Evans). Starring neurodivergent actor Ella Maisy Purvis and co-starring Laura Fraser (Outlander) as the Raphaëlle half of the team (renamed Bea Metcalf), the Astrid remake is expected to arrive on PBS and PBS Passport sometime later in 2025.

Here is the synopsis for Season 4 (translated from the original French by PBS):

Raphaëlle Coste, Commander of the criminal brigade and her autistic sidekick Astrid Nielsen, archivist in criminal documentation, will be confronted with inextricable criminal enigmas. Haunted house, victim dead of fear, crime scene locked from the inside, young man over eighty years old are all mysteries that they will have to elucidate, armed with their differences!

Mortensen and Dewaere return as the leading crime solvers, Astrid and Raphaëlle. They will once again co-star alongside Jean-Louis Garçon as Commissaire Carl Bachert, Benoît Michel as Captain Nicolas Perran, Husky Kihal as Dr. Henry Fournier, and Bruce Tessore as Julien Frédéric. Season 4 will also introduce Sophia Yamna as Norah Mansour to the core cast, replacing series regular Meledeen Yacoubi, who exited at the end of Season 3. 

Elisabeth Mortensen returns as Astrid's mother, Mathilde Nielsen; Kengo Saito plays Tetsuo Tanaka, Astrid's on-again, off-again boyfriend. Season 4 will also bring aboard Handy Gedio, as Niels, Astrid's half-brother. Timi-Joy Marbot and Michel Bompoil return as Raphaëlle's son and father, respectively. The rest of the cast includes Akihiro Nishida, Jean-Benoît Souilh, Hugo Horiot, Eléa Folcher, Clément Lagouarde, Lizzy Brynn, Clément Langlais, and Angélique Bridoux.

Astrid Season 4 arrives with all eight episodes on PBS Passport and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel on Sunday, January 5, 2024. Season 5 is currently airing on France 2, with the finale slated to air just before Christmas 2024, and is expected to arrive in the States in early 2026. Season 6 is expected to be greenlit next year. Patience has not yet set a release date.