Colin From Accounts: Television’s Bogie and Bacall are back for round two
Their show Colin From Accounts is a global hit. But does the smart, funny, sexy onscreen repartee of Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall translate to real life?
Hit TV show Colin From Accounts was never even meant to be made, according to co-creator Harriet Dyer. Its origin story, she says, “was just like, ‘Actress is bored. Actress annoys husband.’ It was husband saying, ‘You might be a writer ... Go and write.’” So Dyer did. Brewed up her pilot in four days, printed it out and nervously handed it to husband Patrick Brammall, who was like, “This is not terrible at all. This is really funny.”
Then Dyer forgot about it.
Which could have been the end of the story.
But a tenacious producer named Rob Gibson got hold of that pilot. Saw the magic in it.
The ABC threw in some development money. And then passed on it.
Which could have been the end of the story.
But now? This joyous romcom set in Sydney’s inner west is licensed in more than 100 territories. It’s on BBC2 in the UK and Paramount+ in the US, and has received rave reviews. Gibson has declared its two creators – 35-year-old Dyer and 48-year-old Brammall – geniuses. They were asked to co-present at last year’s BAFTAs in London; Vanity Fair has interviewed them. It’s been quite the heady ride for two jobbing Aussie actors in LA who are very much writers now too. Writers in demand.
Season Two? No pressure. But the world has been clamouring for more Colin, and Dyer has been feeling the heat. “I had this fear that maybe Season One was this weird fluke made of fairy dust and caffeine and it didn’t exist anywhere else,” she confesses. So when it came to writing a second season of the global smash she suffered a severe case of procrastinating, second-book syndrome in TV form. Could she conjure up the fairy dust, via the caffeine, all over again?
They arrive, a mix of swagger and sweetness, a movie star aura to this It-Couple of Aussie TV. “Excuse me while I do a wee,” Brammall announces in greeting. “A wee!” Dyer repeats, laughing, teasing, and in a flash he’s gone. It all feels so very Colinesque – connecting, warm, honest. Slightly scatological. The vibe of this duo is humble normality coupled with gratitude, and wide-eyed shock, that they’ve actually pulled this off; charmed the world with their eight-episode romcom that feels like it’s written in glee.
The premise of Season One: two sort-of-single people meet when Ashley, a student doctor on the cusp of turning 30, flashes a nipple at a passing car driven by Gordon, a brewery owner in his early forties. He’s so distracted by her that he runs over a dog, which the two end up reluctantly co-owning. With hilarious results. They name him Colin. Because he “looks like a Colin ... Colin from accounts”. Very them.
Brammall, Dyer and I meet at the Moore Park driving range in inner Sydney. No one is sure who actually picked this particular celebrity-profile ice-breaker task. Someone throws in that Chris Hemsworth did paintballing once, for a magazine article or something, didn’t he; so of course we must do an activity too. But … golf? Why us? Because Dyer and I have no idea what to do, Brammall is not a regular golfer, and the sport does not appear in Colin’s second season. Yet here we are – to much merriment.
It is three levels of open concrete, before a vast expanse of green, that’s buzzy with industrious golfers. And us. While Brammall is off doing his wee his wife tells me that she’s terrified of our chosen activity. And that her man is good at just about everything. Yep, one of those. A Swiss Army knife of husbands, handy to have around. “Pool, throwing, catching, weirdly flexible – and golf,” she says, “just you wait.”
So it proves. When Brammall returns he selects the correct golf club (which is further than Dyer and I have progressed), positions himself, aaaaaand swings; a bean pole of elegant stylishness. The ball arcs up and away, landing in the far distance. “You want me to hit that golf car next?” he asks, and proceeds to just miss – most charitably – the tiny car in the distance scooping up balls. Ah yes, Dyer is correct. Brammall is acing shot after shot. And we are so not. “Please mention in this piece that I’m on the PGA Tour,” he teases. “Tiger? Best mate.”
Dyer says she can sense my nerves about this alien golfing situation and will be nervous with me. Says she can pick it; she’s good at empathy-nerves. We’ve only just met and already I want to hug her. She muses that a quiet ceramics session would have been more her thing. “Pat would have been great at that too,” she mutters through gritted teeth.
While her husband is doing his elegant swing Dyer confides that she likes to write cruel little moments into Colin, just for Brammall to endure. For example, an excruciating 30th birthday party which emphasised their 12-year age gap with toe-curling awkwardness (vibe: Dad getting down with the cool young things. Dad failing. Spectacularly.) “It’s my favourite thing to write, ‘Patty humiliated’,” Dyer grins, gleefully. Brammall overhears and jokingly adds: “Because I’m so good at everything.”
Are the pair just like their Colin characters in real life? They speak in bantery shorthand, cutting in, finishing each other’s sentences, making each other laugh; it’s talk tumbling over talk. But it’s not prickly and spiky like the dialogue in Colin, it’s warmer, matier, faster – the well-worn grooves of a sustained, very comfortable and cackly relationship. Perhaps this is what’s in store for Ash and Gordon?
For the past six months Dyer and Brammall have been in Sydney, working on Season Two. They leave in two days for their LA home. Back to normality after an intense slog of work – which also included a second wedding. A what? So much to discuss.
We head to a private room. Not a moment too soon for Dyer and I – we put aside our irons with relief, and hopefully for life. The boardroom is lined with silverware. “Glad you put all my trophies on display, darling,” Dyer quips to Brammall. He pours three glasses of water, despite my protest that this is not the way interviews are usually conducted; I should be pouring for them. But Brammall is caring and gallant. He notices, in an old fashioned, well-brought-up way.
“Come on, mate,” he chuckles. “You’ve interviewed proper famous people.”
“Proper,” Dyer responds.
“Not us,” Brammall clarifies.
I beg to differ. Romcom king Richard Curtis has spoken of their TV show as one of the greats, and right now I have it on good authority that the entire office staff in this golf club is swooning that this adorable, funny, goofy couple are actually gracing their world with their presence; it’s a favourite show.
And it’s conquering region after region. As entertainment industry bible Variety stated in a piece last year: “[It] has become a phenomenon first in Australia, then on the BBC in the UK, followed by the Nordic region and now in the US.” It described it as an international awards juggernaut, “including nominations at the Venice TV Awards, the European Broadcasting Union’s Rose D’Or awards, Content London’s C21 International Awards and major wins at Australia’s Logie Awards. It remains ‘certified fresh’ at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, despite not boasting any familiar IP or major stars.”
And we have Dyer to thank for it all. Backin2017, Pat from Canberra and Harri from Townsville were two actors among many trying to crack the LA scene. Dyer tells how she was stuck at home, between jobs. Brammall picks up the thread. “I said, ‘Hey, what about that idea you had kicking around? Do that.’ And she literally – because I was working on another show – she literally went every day [and wrote it].” What appears in the first episode is essentially Dyer’s pilot. “Oh mate,” Brammall says proudly, remembering. “Out of the gate.”
A little further down the track, and Dyer, who was trying to get into the writing room of another show, was asked to produce a writing sample. So out came “that thing”, as she dubs it, which she’d forgotten about. She sent the script to her mate Rob Gibson, who has worked as a producer at Stan, and in Sydney and LA for production house Circle of Confusion. In 2019, Gibson joined Easy Tiger Productions, where he championed Dyer’s work.
“There was such a clear voice,” he says. “It was effortlessly funny, and it was crazy to me that this was Harri’s first go at screenwriting. She’s just prodigiously talented, as is Patty.”
What do the couple think of the ABC failing to commit? “Hindsight, dumb move,” Brammall smiles. Dyer jumps in: “Ultimately, the feedback was, ‘Sorry, but you’re two straight white people’.” Brammall says it probably didn’t help the ABC’s charter at that time; they weren’t ticking enough boxes. “And that makes sense,” Dyer adds. “We need diversity onscreen.”
The ABC’s loss, Foxtel’s gain. But then the duo was confronted with the pressure of replicating Colin’s magic in a second season. Which is when Dyer’s procrastinating came into play. “[It was a] fear that we’d sit down to do Season Two and it wouldn’t be any good,” she confesses. Brammall jumps in. “Actually, in terms of Harri’s reticence, I think, there was so much great feedback from Season One from the UK, blah blah blah, that it all got a bit heady.”
Dyer more clearly enunciates what it was like to arrive in the UK off the back of Colin: “When we went to the BAFTAs to present that award – that was as Colin was going off – the most beautiful thing was, people weren’t just like [bored tone] ‘Oh, it’s you.’ People were like [rapturous tone], ‘Aaaaaaaawwwww, it’s you!’ It was like they’d seen a long-lost friend. We were bringing joy to people. They were so excited to see us. And that was so yummy.”
Adds Brammall: “And then to come back and write Season Two was like … oh my God, trying to get her to start working … it’s like, every day, you leave a bit of food outside the burrow [Dyer starts laughing] and you go, ‘Trust me, trust me.’ Then on day three you look down and you’re like, [singsong voice] ‘I can see your nose. I know you can see me.’ Then on the final day she’ll come out and it’s like, [serious voice] ‘OK, we’re f..king working now’.” Of the writing process, Dyer explains, “sometimes he charms me, and I charm him”.
They feel freshly married, these two, still slightly giddy with love and teasing and laughter. Yet the relationship’s almost a decade old. They met in 2015 on the set of the Stan comedy No Activity. Brammall, a VCA graduate, had been married before; Dyer was a recent graduate from the Actors Centre in Sydney.
Teasing repartee is a big part of the relationship. “The character connection in the show, that’s probably the most kind of ‘us’ from life,” Brammall says. “It’s the way we can [clicks fingers in rapid succession] f..k around with each other.” They laugh, they’re off again. “You know when you meet those people and it’s an instant connection,” Dyer interjects, “like an old love.”
The age gap is a rich seam of Colin’s comedy but not really noticed in real life. “There was a moment where I was 29, and Patty was 41,” Dyer says, “And I was like, ‘What’s in the middle? Do I get that? Or am I 41 too?’ But that was at the startish. Now we don’t feel it. I sometimes worry a bit though – I don’t want to have 12 years on this planet without him.”
They both ended up in LA around seven years ago, looking for sustaining work. “Patty was getting paid more because he’s a man and he was 12 years further in his career,” Dyer explains. “I was working in film, TV and theatre non-stop from the end of 2012 to 2017 [in Australia] and was never longer than two months without a job – yet I didn’t have any savings.” It was the same for Brammall. “And that’s the struggling artist,” Dyer says. Brammall adds that in Australia, as an actor, you’re constantly spinning plates to make OK money – but it’s nothing you can really stack away to make good savings. “That’s why we go to the States.”
Brammall proposed in 2021, during the pandemic. Five days later they were married on a beach in Tampa, Florida. “It was like, ‘Let’s just do something’,” Brammall says. It was just them and Walter, their dog, a beloved chihuahua-cross. “The best man,” Brammall says.
“There was a lot of licking,” Dyer adds.
At this point it’s noted that Brammall has quietly removed his wedding ring. “He takes it off all the time!” Dyer exclaims. “You started that mate,” her husband responds. “I did,” she agrees. “Are you wearing yours?” Brammall teases. Checks. “Yes, thank you!” She is triumphant. “Amazing,” he says, “because it’s the flip of a coin.” Why has Brammall’s ring been removed? “Just a little fidget spinner.” And they’re off. Another round of banter about losing weight and ring resizing.
They had another wedding over Christmas, in Sydney, during a break in Season Two’s intense filming schedule. This one was for their families. 130 people. White dress. Flowers. The lot. “We didn’t have a wedding planner,” Dyer says. “We do everything ourselves because we are psychos.” “Pyschopaths,” Brammall adds. “We are control freaks,” Dyer concludes.
She got the dress in LA. Looked up the designer on Instagram, saw she did bridal, and contacted her. “I’m just about expedience,” Dyer explains. For a self-confessed procrastinator she’s coming across as very together. “She’s a procrastinator about work,” Brammall says. “Everything else, she’s right on top of.”
As they josh with each other so easily, goofily, charmingly, I realise that underneath it all are two highly efficient operators. Gibson concurs: “They’re both perfectionists, and they won’t rest until they’re entirely satisfied with the result, whether in scripts, or on set, or in the final mix … They won’t mind me saying they’re not shrinking violets when it comes to calling out problems or shortcomings, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s OK to be uncompromising when you’re a genius. And they’re both geniuses.”
They’re also parents to Joni, who they adopted as a baby six months after the Tampa wedding. “People are like, ‘Why that?’” Dyer says of the adoption process. “But it’s just how we started our family. I don’t know if it’s the way we’ll continue to make a family … but that’s how we started it.” They’re unsure if they’ll have more children, but think two-year-old Joni would benefit from a buddy. “She’s very much a pack animal,” Dyer says. “She’s always talking about ‘my baby sister’. Which is funny. I’m like, ‘Who’s your baby sister, mate?’” Joni only has eyes for daddy right now. “Yep,” Brammall says smugly, teasing his wife, “daddy’s girl. At the moment. Could change.”
Dyer famously used her Logies speech last year – when she won Most Outstanding Actress – to give a shout-out to new parents grappling with re-entering the workforce. (Brammall won the male equivalent Logie, and the show won Most Outstanding Comedy Program.) The Colin workload has been hard on them, as a family. Joni has been in childcare or with a nanny while they’ve been in Sydney; some shoot days have stretched over 15 hours and she’s too young to be on set. “There were some days when it ripped me apart”, says Dyer. She recounts a story of having to leave Joni with a nanny ahead of a huge week, and crying on the way to the set. “I got to makeup and I’m like, ‘I’ve got this, I’m good.’ Held it together. And the makeup artist – she’s quite cluey – she’s like, ‘You OK darling?’ And waterworks.
It’s been a gruelling six months of work. Gibson says the couple are involved in every facet of Colin, “from the first thought on a whiteboard to the last frame in the finished show. They’re both on set all the time, whether they’re onscreen or not, and all through post [production], every frame of the edit. Staring at themselves on the screen all day, then going home and being a family”.
Dyer says their little unit is now way out of balance, but soon they’ll be back in LA in a normal domestic world. They had a taste of it over Easter, with Brammall’s family near Canberra. “Joni seemed to get so much out of having her mum and dad just … there,” Dyer says.
“You can see the difference,” Brammall adds. “It’s funny for people who are drawn to life, work, career, without a routine. I think that’s part of the draw of being an actor or a creative person. But we really understand the importance of routine now. For her.” Dyer agrees. “They want to know the pattern of their day. That makes them feel safe.”
So what can we expect in Colin’s next season? The pitch: if Season One was Will they, won’t they?, Season Two is Should they have? Brammall explains that once the dust has settled, and the two characters have exhausted all their cortisol, “it’s just them. Looking at each other. And Gordon as a character, well, the age gap has more baggage. Why is he single in his forties? Why should they be together?”
All the gloriously vivid minor characters are back, including Ash’s mum, Lynelle, who’s beautifully, brutally written, in a way that many mothers and daughters will recognise. “It’s not my mum,” Dyer says quickly. “She’s more based on a friend’s mother. And Mum knows who that is.” Ah, the gleeful grin again.
There are new faces, too. Celeste Barber will appear as Katie, Gordon’s sister-in-law, Brammall and Dyer’s friend Virginia Gay as Rumi, and the veteran actor John Howard as Gordon’s dad, Brian.
Will Colin continue on and on? “Not on and on and on,” Dyer says. “Just on,” Brammall adds. “Two reasons why it would never go to, like, Season Eight. Firstly, I don’t think there’s enough juice in it. And the other reason? We’re doing everything. I don’t think we can keep doing that. Sustain it.”
A clamour of industry people now want to work with them. Ahead, possibly, is a film, a Richard Curtis-like romcom, but with different characters to Gordon and Ash. Brammall says they need to get out of that world. Dyer adds that they have ideas about writing shows they’re not in, and shows they are in but not opposite each other. Brammall explains: “So we don’t have to keep wheeling out our own –” “Romantic dynamic,” Dyer finishes his sentence, a little wearily.
She describes the path they’re on now as a “slow burn”. Says they’re not Colin-rich. “We don’t have a swimming pool and six nannies. We’re just happy to know that it can build a more sustainable career. I wish I could say, you know, Patty’s got a Bentley.” Brammall says they’ve just become busier. “It’s not like, ‘F..k, where’s the work coming from?’ any more. It’s not that, which is fantastic.”
They’re not sure how long they’ll stay in America. Dyer feels a little like she’s cheating on Australia when she’s in LA, but the actorly desire for stability and security is seamed through their talk. They need to know that when they’re back home for good, they’ve set up enough of a foundation so that they’ll have a nest egg – and enough work. For the moment they’re giving people a lot of joy, but it’s exhausting sustaining it with a toddler in the mix. “People go, ‘Give me more, more, this is going down creamy,’” Brammall says, “but for us it’s, like, paddling madly. There’s a lot of effort that goes into making it look effortless.”
The schedule is relentless, Dyer has a fashionshoot to hurry to, and so we must call it a day. We dart back to the driving range for a quick happy snap. A golfer lets us borrow her prize iron. It’s pink, hand-painted with flowers and worth several thousand dollars. She’s nervous. Brammall draws it gently from its white leather bootie, joking all the while and putting its owner at ease. Charming her, as this couple have done to the world, with their sparkly romcom that so beautifully captures the zeitgeist.
So, do they deliver again with Season Two? In spades. It feels comfortingly familiar yet fresh. “I found that once we actually re-entered the world,” Dyer explains, “all that [procrastinating] shit disappeared.” This new round has all the charm of the previous episodes; the warmth of the show goes down like nectar in these dark times. It’s authentic, and we’ve entered an age when the honesty of authenticity is the greatest currency. Because it connects.
But its genius creators are ready for a break. To regroup, and try something fresh. “We need to stop doing Colin for a bit,” Dyer explains, “so we can just walk down the street, hold hands, and make each other laugh again – instead of trying to make the world laugh.”
Season Two of Colin From Accounts premieres on BINGE on May 30.
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