After moving to the United States in the early 1960s, Patterson worked mainly in television. In 1960, he was cast in two episodes of the ABC/Warner Brothers western television series The Alaskans, starring Roger Moore. Patterson played Tom Kirk in the episode "Behind the Moon" and Jeff Warren in "Sign of the Kodiak", a reference to the Kodiak bear. Later that year, he was cast as the fictional detective Dave Thorne in another ABC/WB series, Surfside 6, set on a houseboat anchored at Miami Beach, Florida. His co-stars during the two-year run of Surfside 6 from 1960 to 1962 were Van Williams as Kenny Madison, Troy Donahue as Sandy Winfield, II, Diane McBain as socialite Daphne Dutton, and Margarita Sierra as the singer Cha Cha O'Brien.