PBS Signs on to English 'Astrid' Remake 'Patience'

PBS continues to draw dividends from its ongoing relationship with the team from Walter Presents, which also runs Eagle Eye Drama. On the heels of the announcement that Eagle Eye and PBS have greenlit the popular English language remake of Professor T for a fourth season comes word that the companies are banding together for an all-new series titled Patience. But while Deadline and the other trades reporting on the news take the press release at its word that this is a "new original show," anyone who has watched PBS Passport shows will recognize it immediately as a remake of the popular French police procedural Astrid (Astrid et Raphaelle).

Connecting audiences with shows in the streaming era has become one of the most difficult tasks to achieve in television. The fractured landscape, in which new series are strewn across one of a dozen streaming services, all vying for viewers' eyeballs, attention, and dollars, has made it all but impossible for networks to gain attention for their debuts unless those shows come backed with a massive marketing campaign, or hit Netflix's properly programmed algorithm just right.

That's what makes PBS' relationship with Walter Presents so remarkable. Despite PBS doing almost no marketing (or for a long time sending sites like our information that changed after we published it or was just wrong), series like the original Belgian Professor T, Astrid, Luna + Sophie, Before We Die, Face to Face, Seaside Hotel and others have found a devoted following on streaming via the PBS Masterpiece Channel and PBS Passport. Those shows, in turn, have begotten a cottage industry of U.K. remakes, providing a new set of British shows for PBS to air and stream.