Colin from Accounts is incredible
Your typical boy meets girl, runs over dog, and co-raise the injured dog story


There has never been more good content to watch than right now. It’s a scientific fact and if I had the time to write up a fake academic study about it I’d do it and then link to it, but I’m sure it’s true. The problem with all of this good stuff to watch is that we have a shitload of streaming options (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, Paramount+, Marquee Sports Network+, whatever) and shows and movies just seem to jump from one to another willy nilly, and the streamer interfaces mostly suck so it’s hard to find stuff you actually know you want to watch, much less find stuff you didn’t know you wanted to watch.
On a recent episode of the Pilot TV podcast, Boyd Hilton and Kay Ribiero were going on and on about a show called Colin from Accounts and how great it is. I had never heard of it. But I trust that Boyd and Kay know what they’re talking about. So I set out to try to find this supposedly hilarious show about a guy who owns a brew pub and a medical student in Australia who meet when she distracts him at an intersection (when you see what she was does, you’ll be immediately hooked) and he accidentally runs over a dog. Now, that doesn’t sound like the funniest premise for a show, but somehow it is.
Turns out, unlike some non-US shows, this one is easy to find. It’s on Paramount+. And not only is the first season all there and ready to go, but next week the second season will drop. Seems like the perfect time to hop on.
So what is so great about the show?
One review called it “Australia’s Ted Lasso” and holy shit, it is not that. Now I don’t dislike Ted Lasso, because it’s fine, but it’s also one of the most overrated TV shows in the history of the universe. You will laugh more and harder at the first episode of Colin from Accounts than all three seasons of Ted Lasso.
It’s also surprisingly dirty, but in a charming way. And, it has a dog on wheels. Come on, what’s not to love about that?
Without spoiling anything (and I was going to embed the trailer, but I don’t like that they gave away the first truly funny thing in the show in the trailer), after the brew pub owner Gordon (who wants everyone to call him Flash, and nobody does) runs over the dog, he and Ashley take the injured dog to a veterinarian. It’s complicated by the fact that the vet is named Yvette and that Yvette is one of Gordon’s (apparently) many ex-girlfriends. But they find out that the unnamed dog has a severe spinal injury and will need surgery and will be unlikely to poop or pee on his own much less walk on his own. So they can either pay to have him put to sleep or pay $12,000 to try to save him and then have an adorable special needs dog to care for.
They make the practical decision only to simultaneously yell for Yvette the vet to stop, and they go with the very unpractical decision and have to figure out how to pay for it and how to co-parent an injured young dog (who they are later told could live 12 more years) with someone they met about 20 minutes ago.
There is a scene in the first episode of something that happens to Ashley when she is left alone for the first time in Gordon’s apartment that is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a TV show and it is paid off even more spectacularly in the final scene.
In the third episode, Gordon takes an adorable photo of Colin and texts it to Ashley only to then realize something else is in the photo that really shouldn’t be.
And that’s all I’m going to tell you about this show. Hopefully that’s enough to sell you on trying it, because it’s amazing.
The lead actors are great. Patrick Brammall has a very un-smarmy David Brent vibe to him, and Harriett Dyer is charmingly un-put-together as Ashley. And of course Zac and Buster Fedderson do a great job of playing Colin. Of course they do. And the supporting characters are all very good, especially Helen Thomson who plays Ashley’s mom and has a very good debut scene driving Ashley to Costco and a spectacular one later where she pretends to not be going into a house for a very creepy reason.
Anyway, I said before that was all I was going to tell you about the show, and now I mean it.
Just watch the first episode and see if you can stop there.
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