While I was watching Colin From Accounts Season 2, I had the realisation that comedy shows rarely make me laugh out loud. Even the ones I enjoy.
Colin From Accounts is an exception. This Australian rom-com from husband-wife team Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, which started as a canine-themed meet-cute in Season 1, uses its second season to hilariously build on some already-very-funny foundations.
What's Colin From Accounts Season 2 about?
Season 1 sees brewery owner Gordon (Brammall) meeting trainee doctor Ashley (Dyer). He almost runs her over with his car after she flashes him en route to work, resulting in him hitting a runaway dog (the titular Colin) and the two banding together to nurse the poor pooch back to health. The first season is all about their burgeoning relationship, and Season 2 picks up directly where we left them: Gordon and Ashley are now a couple, and the dog takes something of a backseat as they navigate their way through misunderstandings, changing friendships and awkward family encounters.
Season 2 has some brilliant (and horrible) new characters.
Speaking of awkward family encounters, Season 2 doubles down on the theme of nightmarish in-laws. In Season 1 we had Ashley's never-say-the-right-thing mother Lynelle (Helen Thomson) and her deeply icky partner Lee (Darren Gilshenan). If you thought they were bad, though, Gordon's family provide impressive competition. The episode that introduces his brother Heavy (Justin Rosniak), a sleazy father-of-three who delights in his brother's past behaviour, is as hilarious as it is cringe-inducing. Later, when we meet Gordon's misogynistic dad Brian (John Howard), things get even worse.
All of these characters are painful and hilarious in equal parts, amusing to watch not just because they're so cringey, but because they're also believable. This is a trick Colin From Accounts pulls off time and again — every new person that comes into Gordon and Ashley's lives, from Megan's (Emma Harvie's) self-obsessed new partner Rumi (Virginia Gay) to the slimy "Chief Growth Officer" Jared (Broden Kelly) who wants to buy Gordon's bar, are as familiar as they are wince-inducing.
"What are you driving?" says Jared at one point during his sales lunch with Gordon, after he's made his intentions to buy the brewery abundantly clear.
"I drive—"
"Not anymore," comes the immediate response, accompanied with a knowing half-grin, and Kelly's delivery is so perfect it's difficult to believe he isn't actually a sales rep.
Colin From Accounts is the perfect blend of funny and awkward.
It wouldn't be right to directly compare Colin From Accounts with Baby Reindeer, because the latter is a much darker show. But there is something similar in the way both series blend tone and genre. Baby Reindeer derived much of its comedy from situations that were so awkward they were hard to watch, and Colin From Accounts utilises a lighter version of this, from double dates gone terribly wrong to a finale that – without getting into spoilers – is the stuff of social nightmares.
The show is consistently funny, occasionally moving, and permanently fun to watch, with characters you alternate between groaning at and rooting for. Like Colin, we're quickly swept up into the chaos of their lives, carried along, and made all the happier for it.
Colin From Accounts Season 2 is streaming on Paramount+ from Sept. 26.
