‘It’s not about our love’: Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall on separating fact from fiction

When Harriet Dyer sat down to write season one of Colin from Accounts, she finished the first draft within five days. However, it wasn’t quite so simple when it came to season two of the critically acclaimed, award-winning romantic comedy.

“It started with a whole lot of procrastination,” says Dyer, who is sitting with her husband and Colin from Accounts co-creator Patrick Brammall. “Because I knew that once we started, the genie’s out of the bottle, I can no longer sit on the couch. And being your own boss, that can be a bit tricky. Especially if your husband’s kind of your boss and you’re kind of your husband’s boss as well.”

So she booked a tap-dancing class.

Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall have been lauded at home and overseas for their romantic comedy Colin from Accounts.Credit: Binge/Peter Brew-Bevan

“He thought I was writing,” Dyer says. “And he goes, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I’m booking a tap-dancing class.’ And there was another moment, where he was like, ‘Where are you going?’ And I was like, ‘We don’t have whiteboards. I’m going to go to – it’s basically LA’s Officeworks – I’m gonna go to Staples because we need proper whiteboard markers’ and Paddy’s like, ‘Just sit down and write!’”

Brammall is shaking his head: “My god. And then I had to get the poster framed from season one and put it on the wall before she would start writing a line. It’s a lot.”

It was, says Dyer, plain old fear. “What if season one was lightning in a bottle, and you can’t capture it again?” she says. “But I’ve gained a lot of confidence and grown as a writer and I now know that if the phone rings, or we have to go to pick our daughter from daycare or something interrupts that creative flow, that it’s OK, I will pick it up again tomorrow. Whereas I think season one felt like this big fluke.”

For the record, season one was not a fluke. Dyer and Brammall delivered a wildly funny, big-hearted romantic comedy about two complicated people who belonged together. As Ashley and Gordon, whose meet-cute involved a nipple flash and a disabled dog on wheels, the pair crackled on screen, delivering relatable characters who didn’t fall into any conventional TV stereotypes. It was a throwback to the kind of romcoms we used to do so well, when The Secret Life of Us and Offspring were in their prime. Real people, real heart, real humour.

In season two of Colin from Accounts, Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall) have to work out how to stay in their relationship. Credit: Binge

Audiences and critics loved it, with the show scooping up Logie and AACTA awards for most outstanding comedy and best actress and actor for Dyer and Brammall. It then became a word-of-mouth hit in the UK, while in the US, where it was only released this year, a headline in Vanity Fair recently shouted, “Have you really not watched Colin from Accounts yet?”

Dyer and Brammall are talking from their home in Los Angeles, after spending six months back in Sydney shooting season two and squeezing in a small, second wedding/party on the side (their first was in Florida, in 2021, only five days after becoming engaged). They finish each other’s sentences and still seem stunned about the show’s success.

Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall with their AACTA Award for Best Narrative Comedy Series.Credit: Getty Images

“It was the little engine that could,” says Brammall. “And it’s really blown up in a way that we never expected – hoped for, but didn’t rely on. You know, manage expectations, that’s the key to happiness. It’s just gone so well. And we’re always happy to hear that people are delighted by it because that was the whole point of making it – it delighted us and to know it’s some people’s comfort watch, is a really nice thing.”

Adds Dyer: “We are really chuffed that people find some warmth in it. Because the world continues to throw funny things up that people have to try to live around, and we’re really happy that people love it.”

And while the pair have been shouted out by celebrities – British romcom king Richard Curtis praised it, while at the BAFTA TV Awards in London last year, where the couple were invited to present, they were fanned over by British TV royalty David Tennant and his wife, Georgia, as well as Imelda Staunton and Jason Isaacs – they are mindful of the impact success can have.

“It’s funny because the writing of it, it’s just the two of us in this room,” says Brammall. “And making it together, and making it without collaborators, it’s very practical, there’s nothing glamorous about it, it’s sweaty …

Dyer jumps in: “Very grassroots.”

Brammall: “It’s like you’re right in there, you’ve got your sleeves up, and then we found ourselves in London last year on the red carpet at the BAFTAs. Like, how did this happen? This is so far removed from the making of the show.

“And that’s actually one of the things that I found really positive when we sat down to write season two, that we’d had all this hyperbole from people in the UK, in Australia – it was all wonderful stuff – but I was like, ‘How’s this going to affect us?’ Because none of that stuff is good for creation.

“But what we found when we sat down for season two is all that stuff disappeared and we’re just plugged back into the source of our world that we created.”

Dyer: “That other [celebrity] stuff, it’s funny. It’s important for publicity and press and all that, but I find it very nerve-racking. I’m happier in my trackies at home, so that spotlight element gives me the jitters. But walking down the street, and someone going, ‘Oh, my god, I love your show’, that level of human interaction is much more comfortable.”

What the pair have also had to contend with is a heightened interest in not only their show, but in them as a couple. Suddenly, they’ve had to field questions about their on and offscreen chemistry, their 12-year age gap and if they used an intimacy co-ordinator for sex scenes.

“We’ve realised quite quickly how important it is to protect [our relationship] because I don’t know if there’s any other married couple out there that have written a TV show and then they play opposite each other,” says Dyer.

“It does feel like quite a unique situation. And sometimes we pull back the curtain a bit, and then we regret it because we are making a TV show about love, but it’s not about our love, really. It’s just because we really liked working together.”

Adds Brammall: “But we did use our faces and bodies, and our voices, but apart from that, it’s fiction. We have good chemistry, which is great, and a great relief when we saw the show … ”

Dyer: “And it’s a nice little nugget when people find out that we’re together in real life, that’s lovely.”

Brammall: “And if that helps people feel like they’re getting a peek behind the curtain, then great. But it’s not really [us], there’s fiction in there and stuff we’ve bowerbirded from other experiences and stories we’ve heard and stuff we just made up.”

Dyer: “Gordon and Ashley aren’t Harri and Paddy, and that’s a really good thing.”

Brammall: “Gordon’s a low-key gambling addict and that wouldn’t fly in his household.”

The cast of Colin from Accounts (from left): Tai Hara, Helen Thompson, Emma Harvie, Dyer, Brammall, Genevieve Hegney and Michael Logo.

Dyer: “I think Ashley’s a bit smarter than me …”

Brammall: “Definitely.” (At this, Dyer starts cackling away.)

The second season picks up not long after season one; Ashley and Gordon have decided they want to be together and it’s now a case of working out how the relationship will work and committing to it.

“We couldn’t do ‘will they, won’t they?’ forever,” says Dyer. “It’s so nice to watch two people chasing each other, but eventually, it is nice to find some different kinds of comedy in the domesticity of it all.”

Brammall: “That courting part is over, that chaos is over, but it opens the door to a whole other room where there’s more chaos. Anyone who has been in a relationship knows that the chase is great, but then you’ve got these two people who …”

Dyer: “It’s like turning a rock over and there’s worms underneath.”

The Crapp family from Colin From Accounts: Gordon (Patrick Brammall), Brian (John Howard) and Alistair (Justin Rosniak).

Brammall: “To be clear, neither Ashley or Gordon have worms. But, yeah, if season one is all ‘will they, won’t they?’ season two is ‘should they have?’ There’s a lot of baggage that both of them bring to the house that they now cohabit.”

That baggage includes more of their families. Ashley’s wonderfully awful mum Lynelle, played by Helen Thomson in top-shelf form, and her partner Lee (Darren Gilshenan in another scene-stealing role) reappear, while Gordon’s family – played by John Howard, Celeste Barber and Justin Rosniak – makes their first appearance.

“You know when you meet your partner’s family or friend’s family and you go, ‘Oohhh, OK, that jigsaw piece just fell into place.’ That’s where that comes from,” Brammall explains of Gordon’s family.

One thing that hasn’t changed in season two is Dyer’s preference for dropping Ashley into the deep end. In season one, it wasn’t just the nipple flash, she also fished a poo out of the toilet and did a wee in a bedside drawer. What on earth is she putting Ashley through this time?

“What did I do this time?” Dyer ponders.

Brammall: “She wrote herself a scene with an elderly gent who might have a bit of a downstairs mix-up situation.”

Dyer: “That’s right. And I’m trying to insert a catheter [Dyer’s character is a medical student] into his penis and he’s an elderly gentleman – there was an incredible props department.”

Brammall: “Absolute triumph with the props.”

Dyer: “Huge. And actually hair and make-up really swooped in because the prop needed a bit of fur and paint … and you [Brammall] got a haircut and a beard trim on the day that they were putting some grey pubes on this [fake penis] and the head of make-up said, ‘So, just so you feel a little comfortable, we put a bit of Paddy on this whole situation.’”

Season two of Colin from Accounts streams on Binge from May 30.

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