Colin From Accounts season three: Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall wrap up brilliant comedy series
We’re distraught that Colin From Accounts is coming to an end, but as they say, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
When it comes to a rom-com, the chemistry is everything. OK, not everything but it’s a hell of a lot.
You have to be able to root for them, no matter what they do to each other and to others, and filmmakers often underestimate just how much audiences are willing to invest in that story when the chemistry just isn’t there.
The other significant aspect, of course, is the film making. Because no matter how much two actors might spark on screen, if you don’t support them with an excellent script and great direction, it’s flatter than a pancake under a steamroller.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.When everything falls into place – and it’s not luck, it’s bloody hard work – it’s absolutely magic. It’s Colin From Accounts.
OK, the chemistry thing is going to be easier when the onscreen couple, Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon (Patrick Brammall), are shacked up in real life, and also writes the show, so they can imbue their existing rhythms into their fictional alter egos.
Obviously not every show can do that, but Dyer and Brammall really weaponise their advantage, and it never feels like there’s a false note to Ashley and Gordon and the ups-and-downs of their relationship.
So what you get is a very authentic foundation to Ashley and Gordon in a comedy that naturally lends itself to heightened hijinks, but it never loses its north star of being about these two people.
The series returns for its third and final season, and it is a massive loss for audiences, especially Australian viewers, that this is the last chapter. Every story has to have its end, but it’ll be a bummer to have no more Colin From Accounts to hang out with after this season.
The show started with a strange meet-cute between Ashley, then a medical student, and Gordon, a brewery owner, when she spontaneously flashed a breast at him as she crossed the road in front of his car. As you do.
The resulting accident injured a little terrier dog — that’s the titular Colin — who Ash and Gordon became the co-paw-parents of after the $10,000 vet bill.
The key to Colin From Accounts is that Ash and Gordon are both pretty messed-up people. They can be selfish ratbags, say the wrong things, and behave hurtfully towards other people. It’s their flaws, some bigger than others (ahem, gambling addiction, ahem), that make them human.
It’s also what makes them compelling to watch, and the constant struggle of whether they can ever get out of their own way to be a functioning partner to someone else? People can change, although not that much, and it’s a question of how much they want to be better, maybe even slightly.
That’s what we’ve enjoyed for the two previous two seasons, which ended with Gordon’s embarrassing public proposal to Ash (at someone else’s wedding no less, a massive faux pas). Awks.
When the third season starts, there’s been a time jump and we discover Ash and Gordon’s romance did not survive that proposal, and both have since moved on with new partners — Thomas Coquerel and Nikki Shiels. But a chance encounter puts them back in each other’s orbits.
We’ve always been on Ash and Gordon’s side because the series presented them as multi-faceted characters, and filled out the ensemble and the world around them persuasively.
Each of the supporting characters, portrayed by the likes of Emma Harvie, Virginia Gay, Justin Rosniak, Helen Thomson, Genevieve Hegney, Michael Logo, Tai Hara and Darren Gilshenan, are fleshed out. They feel as if their own adventures (men’s rights activism, motherhood, relationships) continue on even when they’re not on screen.
Only four out of eight episodes were made available for review but the strength of the writing and the performances in those chapters suggest that this season will give the series a great send-off. It has elbows, warmth and pathos, and very few shows successfully balance all that.
If we can’t have more of Colin From Accounts after this, then we can at least treasure what we were gifted of this gem of a series.
Colin From Accounts is streaming on Binge
