If thereās going to be a season three of āColin from Accounts,ā look for a time jump.
Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, stars and creators of the comedy, say the shift would give them a chance to catch up with the gaps that occurred between the first two seasons.
In that time: the married couple had a daughter, dealt with the selling of the series and had to consider the toll āColinā was taking on their lives.
āOnce we started shooting season two, our daughter stopped sleeping through the night,ā Brammall explains. āAnd the bags under my eyes were likeā¦.ā He pauses.
āI had to pull the gaffer aside and I was like, āI donāt want to embarrass Patty, but we really need to lighten him upā¦do some freshening,āā Dyer says.
In that hoped-for season three, the Australians will be older and dealing with the cliffhanger they dropped at the end of season two: an unanswered proposal.
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While signs point to a third season (or even more), Brammall says āColinā isnāt crafted like an American sitcom. āWeāre almost thinking of each season as an act,ā he says. āWhether itās a three-act or a five-act weāre not sure, but it feels like these beats in a relationship.ā
When she was on āAmerican Auto,ā Dyer got a chance to see how American series were crafted. It was quite different from what the Brammalls have created.
āThereās so many more kind of hard jokes and no air,ā she says of the American template. āYou go to a table read and itāll be maybe 39 pages and that has to get down to 22 and a half minutes. So every scene you feel like youāre auditioning it and about a third is lost. Youāve got to really just talk very quickly to hit it all, whereas āColinā is so backbeat.ā Story may spread throughout a season. A joke made in one episode could be referenced two or three later.
āColin,ā too, is a bit more profane than American series. āThatās how we speak,ā Brammall says. āIt feels authenticā¦thereās a sense of taking the piss and the mickey out of each other.ā
When Dyer and Brammall were pitching āColinā to producers, they realized there werenāt Australian rom-coms. There were comedies, but none like the one they were proposing. āWe Googled it and weāre like, āWhere are the Australian rom-coms?āā Dyer says. āWhat would be an idea for two people meeting (over) a shared problem?ā
Thatās where Colin ā a dog he hits while watching her flash him ā enters in.
āA lot of it kind of unfurled from that,ā Dyer says.
What the two discovered was they could drive a wedge between the characters, but they couldnāt make it so big they couldnāt recover. They toyed with the idea of finding the dogās owner and where their relationship might wind up. An age difference between the two provided fodder and, soon, they were opening new doors. āWe no longer had the safety of the rom-com structure,ā Brammall says. āWe kind of reverse engineered it in a way we never used it to a āmeet cute.ā It opened up all funny stuff.ā
Creepy relatives, needy friends, wearying workplaces combined to give the two big moments. And Colin? Heās a go-to whenever needed. āHeās very smart,ā Dyer says. āHeās almost like, not very dog-like on the set.ā
Conflict, the two say, work for their characters. āTension is funny, right?ā Dyer asks. āIf theyāre doing good, everythingās fine, no oneās laughing. You need enough tension to have issues which are funny and sticky and awkward.ā
Because they write the show together, Brammall and Dyer are rarely apart. āThe balance is way off,ā Brammall says. āIt does force you to make it work. In forcing those doors open, you do find more space.ā
They may spend, as she says, ā26 hours a dayā together, but they allow for time for their daughter āand we watch TV together.ā
āColin from Accountsā works, Brammall says, because āitās very connected. We are all silly, we are all just a couple of minutes away from potential tragedy and weāve got to dissipate the anxiety about it.ā
The first and second seasons of āColin from Accountsā are now streaming on Paramount+.