On paper, the antics of a midlife man, Millennial woman and injured dog, thrust together in a humdrum neighbourhood on the other side of the world, doesn’t sound like a recipe for small-screen success.
But when Colin From Accounts was launched on BBC2 last April, it quickly became a word-of-mouth hit, watched by 2.2 million viewers and lauded by British TV royalty, including Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Four Weddings And A Funeral writer Richard Curtis.
The Australian comedy drama, written by and starring Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall – a married couple in real life – begins when medical student Ashley Mulden (Harriet) flashes a breast at microbrewery owner Gordon Crapp (Patrick) while crossing the road, inadvertently distracting him.
He hits a stray dog with his car, which ends up in a canine wheelchair, racking up a vet’s bill of $12,000 AU (£6,400).
The comedy drama was written by and stars Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, who are a married couple in real life
Cue the couple’s expletive-strewn attempts to care for the mutt they name, yes, Colin From Accounts, while clumsily navigating their own burgeoning romance, career crises and family problems.
As the second series lands on BBC iPlayer, here’s everything you need to know about the cult show that’s become an unlikely British obsession…
1. A real life romance and whirlwind wedding
Real-life duo Harriet, 35, and Patrick, 48 – or Harri and Patty, as they call each other – met in 2015 on the set of Australian detective comedy No Activity.
Patrick had appeared in soap opera Home and Away and Australian TV drama Offspring. Harriet had been in drama series Love Child and comedy Packed to the Rafters.
In 2016 Patrick moved to Los Angeles looking for work in the US, while Harriet followed a year after. The couple still live there.
They married on a beach in Florida in 2021, five days after Patrick proposed.
Patrick, who was born with the rare genetic disorder prune belly syndrome, which affected his kidneys, bladder and stomach so severely that doctors didn’t think he could survive, describes himself an extrovert.
Harriet is the opposite – a ‘painfully shy kid’ who didn’t leave her dad’s side at barbecues.
Yet opposites obviously attract. On Instagram Harriet describes Patrick as the ‘eighth wonder of the world’ and a ‘grade-A turnip’; he calls her a ‘diamond’ and a ‘jazzy nymph’.
The couple met in 2015 on the set of Australian detective comedy No Activity and married on a beach in Florida in 2021, five days after Patrick proposed
2. Adopted daughter comes on set too
Five months after their whirlwind wedding, the couple adopted daughter Joni. ‘With us from her first moments thanks to her incredible birth mother,’ Harriet wrote on social media.
Filming on Colin From Accounts, which first aired in Australia in December 2022, started when Joni was just four months old.
Harriet stuck an inspirational message to herself – ‘you can have it all’ – above her desk. She claims Patrick had no such concerns about juggling work and parenthood: ‘I said to Patty before he was a dad, “Are you worried that your work will suffer?” and he was, like, “Nah”. That’s so male, isn’t it?’
Joni, named after Harriet’s grandmother Joanie who died six months after she was born, comes on set with the couple, where she has a nanny.
Nonetheless ‘the day never ends if she’s not sleeping’, says Harriet, who has a tattoo of her daughter’s name on one of her ribs. She still has to tell herself Joni isn’t ‘suffering because her mum works’, but relishes every moment of motherhood: ‘I just love all of it – even when it’s hard.’
Joni, named after Harriet’s grandmother Joanie who died six months after she was born, comes on set with the couple, where she has a nanny
3. Separate desks to stay sane
Harriet wrote the pilot episode for Colin From Accounts in an ‘over-caffeinated’ four days in 2017 just a month after arriving in LA. Then she presented her efforts to a reluctantly impressed Patrick.
They now write separately, or ‘we’d drive each other mental’, says Harriet, who collects inspiration from real-life conversations.
They also ‘exploit’ their 12-year age gap, in the characters of 29-year-old Ashley and forty-something Gordon as, says Harriet, ‘I was just never sure if we were walking a line that was creepy or not.’
Like most writers, they appear well-versed in the art of procrastination – Patrick records his wife putting off work in favour of booking a tap-dancing class – but the process has been a great leveller within the relationship, she says, adding: ‘There is no pedestal now, which is great because I think pedestals and relationships are no good.’
Although she has quipped about suffering from Stockholm Syndrome due to the amount of time they spend together, she describes a distance forged through drama: ‘When the camera’s rolling, I don’t feel like it’s us.’
4. PC statement at the start of the show
Before each episode, a statement from Binge, the Australian subscription service that created the series, appears: ‘Binge acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land on which this programme was produced.’
The recognition of prior Aboriginal ownership of Australia is now common in the country’s media and arts. Some believe it’s PC gone mad, others that it’s a legitimate mark of respect for the thousands of Indigenous people killed and displaced by white settlers.
5. Their first dog was called Colin
The couple have a rescue chihuahua called Wally – full name Walter Mary Patrick, but their first foster dog was called Colin
The couple have a rescue chihuahua called Wally – full name Walter Mary Patrick – which they quip ‘only wears bow ties on walks because you never know who you’re going to run into in Hollywood’. Sadly, biosecurity laws mean they can’t bring him with them on set to film Colin From Accounts in Australia, ‘so we leave him for six months at a time to make a show about a dog’, says Patrick. ‘It’s ridiculous!’
Before Wally, they fostered another dog who had ‘some sh**ty name’, says Harriet, and, while deliberating what to rename him, threw out the suggestion ‘Colin from Accounts Payable, working on a big merger’.
‘That was our joke. I ended up not being capable enough to foster that dog. He had many, many issues and he tried to bite me many times. I was like, well, see you later Colin. But that name stuck.’ And not just in real life.
6. Border terriers take the title role
Melbourne brewery Hop Nation has even created an alcohol-free beer for dogs called Colin’s Pale Ale in honour of the dogs on the show
A TV and film animal trainer presented the couple with a picture booklet of dogs available to play Colin. They chose Border Terrier Zac and lookalike stand-in Buster because of their ‘every dog’ demeanour that reassured them they weren’t being ‘too unfaithful’ to Wally.
‘There were fancier looking dogs – French bulldogs, dachshunds, bigger dogs – but these two had very human eyes and a scruffiness we liked,’ they say.
Thankfully, although Colin ends up unable to use his hind legs and relies on a set of wheels after the accident, Zac is perfectly healthy. Harriet jokes on social media that ‘stars need their rest though’, so sometimes they use a towel named Terry wrapped up in a belt as a stand-in if Zac or Buster become tired.
Meanwhile, Melbourne brewery Hop Nation has even created an alcohol-free beer for dogs called Colin’s Pale Ale in their honour.
7. The eight-second Kevin Bacon cameo
Look for A-Listers and you’ll be disappointed – the couple hire their actor friends.
‘There’s a great deal of nepotism,’ jokes Harriet. ‘We just want to give our mates jobs.’
They include Helen Thomson, who plays Ashley’s narcissistic mother Lynelle; Emma Harvie as Ashley’s best friend Megan, plus Michael Logo and Genevieve Hegney as Gordon’s brewery colleagues Brett and Chiara.
Harvie, of Sri Lankan heritage, says she didn’t see anyone who looked like her represented on television growing up (‘I didn’t really think I could be an actor and make money from it – especially in Australia’).
After being invited to present a BAFTA at the TV awards in London last May, the couple were approached by British actress Imelda Staunton
Annie Maynard, who plays Gordon’s ex, Yvette the Vet, is also the voice telling passengers to prepare for take-off on Virgin airline planes in Australia. ‘“Don’t vape in the toilets,” that’s me,’ she told an interviewer.
Harriet’s sister Madeleine, or Madge, has directed episodes of the show, because, joked Harriet, ‘if I don’t help her out, I can’t really show up at Christmas, now can I?’
However, there is a series-two cameo from Kevin Bacon, who the couple befriended after Patrick worked with his wife Kyra Sedgwick on US sitcom Call Your Mother. Bacon is hired as himself by Brett’s parents to tell Brett to move out of the family home, via the celebrity message service Cameo.
‘We had some more of him,’ says Patrick, ‘but we decided it’s more fun to have Kevin Bacon just for eight seconds – like, what the f**k? It was wonderful of him to do it.’
8. That breast-flashing scene
After that opening breast-flashing scene (‘I was interested in what happens if men see women or women see men, there’s attraction and there’s an accident, and then you can’t hide the fact that you were just an animal,’ Harriet explains), the crass comedy continues, from the toilet contents Ashley throws out of Gordon’s window when it doesn’t flush, to the focus on Gordon’s manhood following his testicular cancer (and, indeed, his surname Crapp).
In addition to facilitating physical comedy, it makes the characters feel ‘real’ says Harriet.
And Patrick joked that viewers ‘come for the nipple and stay for the heart’.
As far as the toilet humour goes it’s non-negotiable – when a foreign broadcaster wanted to cut the scene with the non-flushable loo, they refused.
‘We said – and this is anathema in Hollywood – maybe let’s not make this sale,’ says Patrick. ‘It sounds like it’s not for them.’
9. Imelda ‘the Queen’ Staunton’s a fan
Already ‘blown away’ by the show’s success in Australia, Patrick and Harriet say the series’ popularity in Britain took it to ‘another level’.
Why do they think it’s been such a hit here? ‘I think we were just similar enough in terms of our sensibilities and just fresh enough as in something different,’ replies Harriet.
Patrick believes Brits ‘share that same sense of embarrassment’.
That the show is filmed in largely forgettable suburban areas of Sydney could also be part of the draw, he says, ‘because it felt a little bit like their backyard but removed’.
Nonetheless, they resolutely refused pressure to dial down the Australian slang for overseas audiences.
‘I said no, we’ll just keep it super Australian and if people have to Google words or rewind or put on their subtitles, then they can,’ says Harriet.
After being invited to present a BAFTA at the TV awards in London last May, they were approached by British actress Imelda Staunton, who starred as the Queen in Netflix series The Crown. ‘You don’t know me but I’m Imelda Staunton and I love Colin!’ she told them.
‘We said, “We do know you, mate. We know you, Your Majesty!”,’ says Patrick.
10. Expect a third series…
With the show now also screened in the US, opportunities have never been greater and the couple are currently co-writing a film screenplay
Series one ended with Colin being sent to live with new owners, a decision Ashley and Gordon quickly regret.
Series two picks up just two weeks later, with the couple living together and wondering whether their relationship will last.
Harriet warns it ends ‘in such a way that people will be cross!’ Which, of course, leaves it ‘open for a third’, adds Patrick.
With the show now also screened in the US, opportunities have never been greater and the couple are currently co-writing a film screenplay.
‘We thought the by-product would be awesome acting jobs, but it’s backfired a little because people want us to write for them,’ says Harriet.
However: ‘We don’t want to keep wheeling out our chemistry because it’s a real living plant and you’ve got to nourish it,’ says Harriet, who admits another rom-com is off the cards, despite the success of their creation.
