The phrase “disabled-pet comedy” is not a thing you expect to read in a headline. And yet there it was recently, in the Hollywood Reporter: “Down Under Dogs: The Aussie Couple Behind Disabled-Pet Comedy Colin from Accounts.”
It’s not inaccurate: Colin the dog is at the centre of the show, and he lost the use of his hind legs in the incident that brought its protagonists, Ashley and Gordon, together. But Colin from Accounts is mostly about love, life and – so regularly you could set your watch by it – the daft things we do in the heat of the moment.
Its appeal is so universal that the show has made Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, the married couple who created it and play its lead roles, into global television “superstars”, according to entertainment industry bible Variety.
Which might be overstating it, but they’ve definitely had a hit. Dyer and Brammall told Variety that it’s all been something of an accident. The LA-based couple wrote the show only because they thought it might help them get more acting work. Now, here they are with a second season.
Ashley and Gordon did eventually get together towards the end of the first season – and then they did something daft. In the course of a spat, they gave away Colin, the symbol of their relationship, to a new family. And Colin’s new owners aren’t about to give him back.
That’s the set-up for season two, which introduces some new faces – such as veteran Aussie character actor John Howard as Gordon’s father – and some new financial pressures not involving Colin’s vet bills, though Colin’s vet, Yvette (Annie Maynard), does present Gordon and Ashley with another problem.
It all unfolds with the easy, earthy humour that drew in viewers in the first place. Dyer thinks it was the sense of reality in their writing – some of the jokes come straight from their own marital banter – that connected with audiences.
“We haven’t put too much of a sheen on anything,” she says. “We both have pretty regular faces. The lines feel like people would say them.”
Brammall adds, “One of our big things when we’re writing is using our bullshit meter. Oftentimes, Harri will say to me, ‘That sounds like a line from TV.’ So, we get rid of it and make it something that a human would actually say.” At times, that means the quintessentially Australian use of swearing as punctuation – which hasn’t deterred viewers, or critics, in countries with different customs.
Look, we’ve all done it. And we would hope, unconvincingly, that we wouldn’t be as daft as Ashley and Gordon – and also that, if we were, we’d be as human about it as they are.
Colin from Accounts, TVNZ+, from Wednesday, July 17; the 2022 first season is also available on TVNZ+.
