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Met began, as great festivals do, with the flash of a peak. When Colin from Accountsa little drama that ends, started airing in 2022, the world fell in love – hard and fast. It was very interesting in Australia to show Ashley, a student doctor (Harriet Dyer), and Gordon, an elderly owner (Patrick Brammall), who fell in love after shooting him, hit a dog with his car, and together they got a bill for astronomy and a new pet.
The film shared its name with its worst star – the full name: “Colin from accounts payable, who works in the joint” – and it was as beautiful as the title said, winning fans in Hollywood and around the world. Brammall and Dyer were actually a couple, now married with two kids and a dog (without wheels), they just made everyone love the show.
But Colin from Accounts is now ending its third season – which some may feel is a little too early, but with undeniable confidence. “We don’t want to beat a dead horse,” says Brammall. “I feel good.”
As Dyer adds: “It’s not like the horse is dead yet – we don’t even want to find out it’s struggling to breathe.”
Completing their show, which they both rewrite, has yet to reach Brammall. “I don’t think it’s affected me, to be honest,” he says. “There were a lot of little moments – ‘Oh shit this is the last time I’m going to do this, this is the last time I’m going to do this.’ Dyer, meanwhile, has had three “big cries”: “The last one was when I was in the planning team and I just looked around the little gray room and it came out like vomit.”
Colin’s first season was a story of will-they-won’t-they. Season two said well-they-but-should-they? The third part asks if they can again? The new episodes open three years after Gordon and Ashley’s awkward wedding at a friend’s wedding: Ashley and Gordon are separated and dating, but reunite when Gordon unwittingly has an affair with a doctor at Ashley’s workplace.
Couples with a hell of a lot of chemistry playing exes are fun to watch. “And playing is fun,” says Brammall. “Obviously, we like to play what we like, but we like to have big arguments as well. We’re actors, so we like to show off. I had a ball. I think Harri did too.”
The third season has “a bit of a loose quality and a bit of an undercurrent – it’s like taking them back to square one”, adds Dyer. I think any compromise is fine. Wish, it is easy to play this game, especially with someone you know well.
Splitting Ashley and Gordon up just seems like a fun, creative way to go down; The three-year jump, meanwhile, was useful. “I’m almost 38 and Ash was 30 in season two – we had to do it a little bit!” Dyer laughs.
The two said first he said that he has one big battle every season. What was it during this time?
“Golly gosh, I think we didn’t have it,” Dyer says. “We’ve had a lot of money and energy.”
Brammall laughs. “Two days ago we had one child.
“Those days are over,” adds Dyer. “Now it’s like, how do I say this in a way that’s not too offensive so we can make some cheese pasta and put the girls to bed?”
It’s rare for an Australian exhibition set in Sydney to be without the images of the Harbor Bridge and Opera House that the world has come to expect. This was not a wise choice; Gordon owns a small brewery, so Brammall and Dyer put him to work in one of Sydney’s busiest areas: the inner west. But the result has meant that viewers around the world have a glimpse of a city that doesn’t feel so far from their own, barring the magpie song and the gumtrees.
“In the fifth episode of this season we’re going to the beach, but it’s probably the first sand in all of Colin’s episodes. Which, yeah, like the Sydney show feels a bit rude,” says Dyer. “People haven’t seen that side of Sydney, which makes it interesting. Something about the terraces and the warehouses – it doesn’t feel like Sydney, which makes it global.”
“We don’t need to sell Sydney to the world, we don’t need to sell Australia to the world,” Brammall adds. Recalling Colin’s first attempt as “a new Australian joke”, Dyer replied: “Don’t say an Australian joke. It’s a new joke.”
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“Why are we so quick to call them Australians?” Brammall says. “How come we’re world class and we shouldn’t be? Let’s tell the story we want to tell and the people of Sydney, Australia, will follow.”
There’s enough local memorabilia for the home crowd – band T-shirts, live music, the occasional “cunt” dropped by nana. But one time he received a tip from an American official using the word “arvo”: “They said, you have to make it ‘daytime’ so the Americans know what we’re talking about. And we were like…no.
Part of Colin’s fun comes from the clear sense that every conflict, every tragedy, every shame, has actually happened to someone in the show. A version of the poo scene in the first episode happened to Dyer; The funny thing about the age difference between Gordon and Ashley is also true (Brammall is 50 years old, Dyer is 37 years old; fans once thought it was his father).
Even Gordon hitting Colin with his car after being distracted by Ashley’s flash: Dyer once drove a pram into a tree after seeing a hot guy. “It wasn’t like that mine baby,” says Dyer, as Brammall laughs: “I wasn’t a very good babysitter. The child was fine. “
There are also more difficult moments, such as Gordon’s fertility problems after surviving testicular cancer, which Brammall thinks was linked to his own infertility caused by a childhood illness. (Brammall and Dyer have two adopted daughters, Joni and Mabel.) “It’s not until you read it later that you say, ‘Oh, I see that it has something to do with my life,'” he says. “These little ideas or thoughts or experiences can float around and usually, if it’s funny or if it seems real, then it’s in the show.”
“We touch on the dirty stuff that sometimes you wouldn’t dare to touch on, but we handle it in a lighthearted way,” says Dyer.
“And always with love,” Brammall adds. “We do light and dark things – making people laugh and then beating them is a very serious thing.”
“It’s not all gold, but Pat and I always try to make it the best it can be,” says Dyer. (Brammall: “Oh, yeah.”) “We don’t think we’re in control of anything.” (Brammall: “Oh, no.”) “We are afraid today because we still care therefore more if people like it.”
People already love Colin from Accounts, including celebrity fans Nick Offerman, Lena Dunham, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Richard Curtis and Anne Hathaway; Brammall recently played the latter’s boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada 2. From the top, what does success look like for Brammall and Dyer now? Dyer immediately answers: “Establishment.”
“Because the hours of this life are very difficult – it is not really planned for married couples to leave and come home at the same time when you have small children who need you,” he says. “For me, success looks like a good balance between reading my book and finishing it.
“It’s going to be a wonderful life,” says Brammall.
