Exclusive:Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall on Colin From Accounts, supporting the WGA strike, and finding the right dog

Colin From Accounts co-creators and stars Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall discuss what inspired their new romcom, how the WGA strike might delay Season 2, and more
Harriet Dyer as Ashley and Patrick Brammall as Gordon in Colin From Accounts, eating dinner together with Colin (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Tony Mott)Harriet Dyer as Ashley and Patrick Brammall as Gordon in Colin From Accounts, eating dinner together with Colin (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Tony Mott)
Harriet Dyer as Ashley and Patrick Brammall as Gordon in Colin From Accounts, eating dinner together with Colin (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Tony Mott)

Colin From Accounts is a romcom – a classic boy meets girl, boy hits dog with car, boy and girl take care of injured dog story. Originally airing on the Australian streaming service Binge in December 2022, it’s recently been picked up by BBC Two and iPlayer, where it’s quickly become a hit. 

Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, who co-created Colin From Accounts and star in it together, recently joined NationalWorld’s Alex Moreland to talk about the series. They discussed its recent rave reception, revealed their initial inspiration for the show, and explained their co-writing process. 

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Dyer and Brammall also went on to talk about why it was important to them the show be set in Australia, shared how the WGA strike could impact a possible second season, and shed some light on the casting process and how they found the right dog to play Colin. 

I was thinking – I normally do all these interviews before a show has come out, so it’s a bit unusual to be speaking to you now when the show is already out, and people already love it. What’s it been like for you these past few weeks?

Harriet Dyer: It's interesting. It's like, you're not answering the question of “how do you think, you know, the UK will like it?” Now It's just a lot of “how do you feel about how well it's done here?” But we didn't know, we didn't know that it would do so well. 

Patrick Brammall: We were told, you know, it's gone really great in the UK, and I was following on Twitter – like, it looks good, it looks good – but also you don't really know until you’re here. Meeting people last night [at the BAFTAs, where Dyer and Brammall more or less presented the Best International Series award to Dahmer] was amazing. The response has been incredible. Yeah. People were like “Oh my God, you're on that show.” And that's never happened before, that’s never happened before. 

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So, just to set the scene a bit, can you tell me a little about how Colin From Accounts first came about? What was your starting point?

HD: Patty was working on a TV show that he made in America called No Activity, and then I was a bit bored because I’d just moved to LA and I was a bit lonely – I was used to working a lot in Sydney, doing various stuff – and Pat said, “why don't you go and write a script? I think you'd be really good at it – there was that idea you had about a guy and a girl and a car and a dog, like, give it a go”. I spent the first day downloading [screenwriting software] Final Draft – and then at 5pm was like, click, good day – and then the next few days I spent writing the script. And then Patty wrote episode two, and then I think I wrote ep three, and then yeah, we kind of took turns writing.

PB: We’ve got individual credits for the episodes, but once that first draft was written, that first script, we talked about it more and we fleshed out the story for what a season would be. Then we got a little bit of development funding, and so we went from there. So, we wrote over each other's stuff a lot, but that starting point was when we talked about that idea, and then Harri went away and wrote the pilot – in a week, which was pretty trippy, and really annoying.

Annie Maynard as Yvette, Patrick Brammall as Gordon, and Harriet Dyer as Ashley in Colin From Accounts, gathered around an injured Colin on the vet operating table (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti)Annie Maynard as Yvette, Patrick Brammall as Gordon, and Harriet Dyer as Ashley in Colin From Accounts, gathered around an injured Colin on the vet operating table (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti)
Annie Maynard as Yvette, Patrick Brammall as Gordon, and Harriet Dyer as Ashley in Colin From Accounts, gathered around an injured Colin on the vet operating table (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti)

This is your first big show together, but not the first time you’ve written together – how did Colin compare to something like Summer Love?

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HD: Oh, Summer Love we wrote after Colin – although [Summer Love] came out before [Colin], we wrote that script when we were probably four episodes into having written Colin and Colin was just taking a little minute. The people who made that show love Patty and I personally, and were like “you should write a script” – that one was quick again, and it was so fun to also have a boundary? Like, it's got to be in this AirBnB, it's got to be about these people – 

PB: It was heaps of fun. 

HD: Yeah, that was so fun. In that case, we kind of split up scene by scene, it was like, Oh, you write the opening, I’ll write two or three scenes, and then, of course, if there was a scene in the plotting of it that you were desperate to write, take it –

PB: We basically split up – we’d get together for the plotting, we’d talk about the story and the bits and pieces and the characters, and then we'll go away and write the scenes or the episodes as the case may be.

With Colin From Accounts, you’ve spoken a bit about thinking of it as a very Australian show, and turning down offers to shoot in in America – 

PB: Well, there were no offers. Maybe suggestions!

HD: “What if you did it here?”

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– and turning down suggestions to shoot it in America. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little on what that means when you say it felt Australian?

PB: Yeah, well, the Australian-ness, it's the fibre of show – it’s in the weave, it’s in the fabric. The meet-cute, or the situation, was always going to live or die by the tone of it, and the tone for us was about the way we interact, and our banter, and the way we interact with our friends and colleagues. They’re Australian characters, really, people we've observed.

HD: It’s stuff that family have said.

PB: It's a lot of stuff that we've stolen and robbed and bowerbirded really, from our own lives and other people's lives and, you know, actual human behaviour. It’s the kind of stuff you can't really – well, you can make it up, but it just has that extra resonance when you pull a little bit [from real life]. Then you build a nest around it, you know, you don't just put things holus-bolus on screen. But yeah, a lot of that was very much in Australia, and the way we thought about it was the more specific we were about the details of these characters, then hopefully the more universal the appeal. And that seems to be the case!

HD: We could have – because it's a fairly international simple story, boy meets girl, etc – we could have transplanted it and put it in New York City or even London, but we would have lost some of the authenticity that we had created in terms of, like we said, people we know and behaviours that we've witnessed. I mean, it did feel like, for us anyway, that putting it in Australia was the only way to do it.  And also, we wanted to inject some good work into our country. We wanted Australia to have a comedy on the international map, if possible, that people could go oh, that's an Australian export. We have a lot of exports, but we couldn't think of one that fits this genre – there’s a lot of great Australian shows that have made it across the pond, but not a romcom like this, so we wanted very much to keep it in our voice.

Harriet Dyer as Ashley in Colin From Accounts, pushing a bicycle past a garage sale (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Tony Mott)Harriet Dyer as Ashley in Colin From Accounts, pushing a bicycle past a garage sale (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Tony Mott)
Harriet Dyer as Ashley in Colin From Accounts, pushing a bicycle past a garage sale (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Tony Mott)
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This is just an aside, but I figured it might entertain you – watching the first episode, I kept trying to work out where I knew you both from – because I really like Evil [which stars Brammall], and I really like American Auto [which stars Dyer] – but with your actual Australian accents I just couldn’t put it together.

PB: Oh amazing, that’s so good.

HD: That’s so funny. It’s interesting, we’ve both done bits and pieces in LA – well, in America – and it’s enough to keep us there. It’s enough to fund our lifestyles – 

PB: Our exorbitant lifestyles, our decadent lifestyles.

HD: Yeah, Patty buys Cartier watches just to throw them at people.

PB: Yeah, I don’t keep them. 

Well, the new series of American Auto arrived in the UK recently, so I’m looking forward to starting that and maybe funding a few watches. On another note, I was curious about Colin himself – how was he cast, how did you know he was the right dog for the show?

HD: He had the biggest trailer.

PB: Yeah, never work with animals [gestures to Dyer] –

HD: Shut up.

PB: – or dogs.

HD: No, he was great. He was very placid.

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PB: Extremely professional. They sent us – because we’d written the thing, obviously, and we’re wondering do we get an actual disabled dog, how would that work? – so they sent us a list of dogs, and said, look, photos. Well, that's a gorgeous sausage dog, that's a gorgeous –

HD: French Bulldog! They were too fancy.

PB: Yeah, too cute, too fancy. You wouldn't believe that it just gets out of the gate and it looks a bit like a scruffy stray.

HD: We thought that this dog we chose was a scruffy mutt, and then the Border Terrier community have been like “BTs! Yeah!” We're like, “oh, s***.”

PB: We didn’t know that Colin is actually a pure breed, he’s just a little scruffer to us.

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HD: He’s actually fancy in his own right! But yeah, the BT community is going apes***.

PB: BT Strong! But Colin was actually two dogs. What were their names?

HD: Zach and Buster.

PB: Zach and Buster. Zach did most of the heavy lifting.

HD: Buster was hotter. Buster was a better-looking dog.

PB: He was a hot dog.

HD: And so, because of that, he's on the poster, and he's the cute dog that opens the gate with and trucks down the street. He opens the show! He basically does all the hot dog bits. [Laughs]

PB: Honestly! Buster was like – that little bit at the gate where it's gonna open – he did on the second tape. Like, that's it.

HD: We would’ve used Buster more – 

PB: I don’t know why we didn’t use Buster more –

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HD: Buster was a little less trained, and so he was a little more rough around the edges. That’s why it was kind of exciting with the gate, because I think Zach probably would have just gone “excuse me.” Like, Zach was really talented. 

PB: And he smoked a lot. 

HD: A lot of cigars. Buster was a little bit more of a naughty one, and so I think the idea was that if we used Buster all the way through it would slightly be a longer shoot. Yeah, whereas Zack would hit a mark better.

PB: A professional. Much better than you, you could barely hit a single mark [laughs].

Patrick Brammall as Gordon in Colin From Accounts, drinking a coffee (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti)Patrick Brammall as Gordon in Colin From Accounts, drinking a coffee (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti)
Patrick Brammall as Gordon in Colin From Accounts, drinking a coffee (Credit: CBS Studios Inc/Easy Tiger Productions Pty Ltd/Foxtel Management Pty Ltd/Create NSW/Lisa Tomasetti)

Just on another note, what have you both been watching and enjoying recently? 

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HD: We’re big Succession fans. What else are we watching? We like Dave on FX.

PB: Have you watched Dave?

No, no, but it’s on the list.

HD: It's very American – having been watching it, and then coming here, I wonder how it will go here because it is such an American tone. We like Dave. Sorry, I've got a mashed potato for a brain. What else have we been watching? 

PB: We’ve hit all the big ones.

HD: Yeah, we’ve hit all the big ones. I’m desperate to watch the new season of Barry, because I’m obsessed with Bill Hader.

Oh, I love Barry.

PB: Regularly, Harri pulls me into reality TV, and I'll resist it for about six months, and then she’ll go oh please please please, and she'd be like sad if I don't, so okay just while we have dinner… and then like five minutes out I'm going “oh, well she's kidding herself, oh are you joking mate?!” and then I'll be in for 54 episodes. Then I go I'm not doing this again, and then in six months’ time I'll do it again.

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HD: It was funny doing ITV this morning, because like Patty has subscribed – he pays for ITV, because we were watching Love Island. Also, we loved that Drive to Survive – we just like all sorts of stuff, you know? Oh my god, I was obsessed with that Stanley Tucci show where he went all around Italy. We've taken to a lot of different genres. 

PB: But we're like GP, you know, we need to see and have someone say something to us six times, and then someone else needs to recommend it to us while we're sitting on the couch with the remote in our hand. Yeah, we're not complicated people.

Is there anything you can tell us about a potential second season of Colin – am I right in thinking you’re on strike at the moment?

HD: Yeah, yeah. Patty’s a WGA member, and I'm not, but it's known as scabbing if I were to turn this into an opportunity, like “oh, he can't work, but I can”. 

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PB: Yeah, so it’s pens down, pens down all round, but before that happened we were plotting. We don't have the go ahead for second season yet, but it'll come I would have thought.

HD: Yeah, and we can't get the go ahead until we've delivered a draft or two of the first eps. So, we have to do a bit of work – once the strike is over, we'll get back into it – but we have to do a bit of work, just plotting out the whole thing, because you don't want to deliver a draft of a first episode when you don't know where it's going. So, we've been plotting a lot.

PB: Yeah, we spent a bit of time before the strike just throwing ideas around again, because we already love the world, but now we've seen these fantastic actors execute these characters. “I'd love to get those two together, we'd love to work out what we're going to do with those two. What’s funny?”

HD: When we were plotting it, we found one of the most important steps was to get a whiteboard. Instead of just doing episodes one two three four through to eight, we [also] wrote every character in different coloured pens, like “they've got to come back in ep three”, we just wanted to make sure that every character has enough.

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PB: We spent a good half-day just finding different coloured pens, that was very important.

HD: Yeah, there was a lot of pen work. It was a really important whiteboard, because we could be like, “oh, shoot, we haven't used Chiara for two episodes, got to get her in there”. People are responding so well to these characters, and we love them as well. 

Finally, then, just to wrap everything up – what do you hope people take from the show?

HD: I just want it to make people happy, truly. I mean, it sounds really bass and basic, but I feel like if people are happy, and they are able to escape whatever it is that they might be going through, in a way that's not Love Island, it's not kind of that fairy-floss reality TV show – which I love! – but it's something of a bit more structure and quality where they can fall for fantasy worlds.

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PB: I think one of the most heartening things about the response from the people who've seen it, yesterday and all that sort of stuff, is they've all been delighted to see us. 

HD: Yeah

PB: And to delight people is like, there's actually nothing better you can do in life, I think. One of the big themes of the show that we would use sort of as a compass point was that the show is about embracing chaos – and there's two people start by this chaotic incident and going okay, well, this wouldn't have happened, and we've got to embrace that – and we think that's something that we like to do as people? I think if someone could take that from the show, that'd be great. But delight is the key thing for me.

HD: Because you know, if you do a job and it's a big acting performance and someone says “I love you”, you know, there's a seriousness to it, but truly like, as Pat just said, last night at the BAFTAs people would see us and their faces would light up. And that’s wild!

PB: And that’s never happened before.

HD: Because we’re horrible, we’re horrible people.

PB: Yeah, we’re disgusting, disturbed people.

Colin From Accounts is available in full on BBC iPlayer and continues on BBC Two on Tuesdays at 10pm.

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