The streaming age has no shortage of will-they-won’t-they romances – the good, the bad, the cosy, the smutty, the made-for-the-algorithm. How did Colin from Accounts manage to rise above the tropes? How, in just a few years, has Patrick Brammall’s overseas profile gone from a solid but largely ignored cop comedy, to getting headhunted to woo Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada 2?
When I think of how Colin from Accounts first won me over in 2022, a moment in the first episode comes to mind. Two strangers, pub owner Gordon (Brammall) and med student Ashley (Harriet Dyer) sit in a cafe, making awkward small talk as they wait for the veterinary clinic next door to tell them whether the small runaway dog they’ve accidentally maimed will pull through. Suddenly, the barista relays sad tidings phoned in from the vet: the dog has died.
Or rather, a dog has died. It soon becomes clear multiple diners are anxious pet owners killing time, and a Mexican wave of shock and grief envelopes the cafe as they try to figure out whose beloved pet carked it. As far as meet-cutes go, it’s more of a meet-cringe.
But, having just spent an awful lot of time and money in vet clinics – where the cute chaos of untrained puppies often shares a waiting room with tearful customers about to leave empty-handed – I found it perfectly relatable, and perfectly ridiculous. My partner and I laughed through tears (neither of our cats survived, FYI). Such a tableau shows why Colin from Accounts is such a charming watch.
It’s grounded in its absurdity, self-assured in its delivery, distinctly Australian but never panders to a preconceived idea of what that means. For me, its winning blend of caustic discomfort and a big heart also evokes that other great TV love story: Tim and Dawn in the original UK run of The Office. There’s also the couple themselves.
Brammall and Dyer say Gordon and Ashley aren’t entirely based on their own love story, but their raw chemistry is, without question, the show’s secret sauce. Like Australia’s elderly millennial answer to Zendaya and Tom Holland, there is something magnetic about watching these two cook on and off-screen, from the way their comic sensibilities sync as writers, to how they make that writing crackle for the camera. This third and final season opened with a gambit: having ended the previous season on what seemed like a narrative point of no return (an ill-judged marriage proposal from Gordon, humiliatingly shot down on the spot by Ashley) the show jumped ahead three years.
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