The real-life love story behind Colin From Accounts, the funniest romcom of 2023

Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall are replaying a fight they once had. It was a Sunday afternoon and Brammall felt they should invite some friends over. Dyer was having none of it. “I was just like ‘urgh, not on Sunday!’” 

“Loves a guest, this one,” says Brammall, with a gentle eye roll, sitting on the sofa next to his wife in their Los Angeles home. 

“Paddy went: ‘Ah I’m just disappointed, I thought when we got together we’d have an open door policy. I just thought we’d have friends over more… 

“I went: ‘Oh yeah?! Well I thought we’d dance more.” 

It’s exactly the kind of scene that makes Colin From Accounts – the show the couple wrote and star in, and which has catapulted them into the spotlight in recent weeks – so compelling. If you haven’t yet watched Colin, you might be under the impression it’s a quirky sitcom about a dog that gets run over. It is a bit, but mostly it’s about a fledgling relationship between two people, portrayed by real-life husband and wife Brammall, 47, and Dyer, 34, and who are fumbling their way through new love and working out how to navigate a 12-year age gap. 

It begins with a meet-cute that should be preposterous but strangely isn’t. Dyer’s character Ashley, a sixth-year medical student, impulsively flashes her nipple to a guy in a car (“Was it your party t__?” her friend Meggles asks later. “Not even, it was my small one”). Gordon, played by Brammall, is so stunned he accidentally rolls the car into a border terrier. From that moment on the pair are bound together by a $12,000 vet bill and an unlikely spark. 

It could have been the start of a classic romcom trope – hopeless brooding man meets manic pixie dream girl. Except Gordon is more well-meaning wally than tortured genius, and Ashley is no dysfunctional female lead; she’s as surprised as the audience by her sudden instinct to flash a stranger. 

Dyer is relieved Ashley has been received so warmly. “My fear was that she would seem a little bit loopy and therefore unrelatable,” she says. “That little look that I do as I’m walking away buttoning up my shirt where she’s like ‘why did I do that?’ That was so important to me. I didn’t want the audience going, who’s this girl who just flashes her nipple at anybody?” 

It’s 7am in LA and the couple are in their living room nursing takeaway cups of coffee. They have pushed back our chat by a few minutes in order to make an emergency dash for caffeine. “Our coffee machine s--- itself yesterday,” says Dyer. 

It feels as though they are on the precipice of a great change — the kind that only comes along occasionally, only happens to a few people and a few TV shows. This is their Fleabag moment. Colin came out in Australia (both are Australian and the show was filmed in Sydney) in December 2022. The reaction was good but in a relaxed Australian way. “This show among many things is a love letter to Australia,” says Brammall, “and Australians are like ‘OK mate you’ve had your success, let’s just see how others go’.” 

“Australia was like ‘that’s good guys…’ but England has been like ‘you guys crushed it!’” says Dyer.

The response in the UK has been “crazy”. “I’ve actually had to stop looking,” says Brammall. “It’s a bit like eating fairy floss – it tastes so good and then after a while…” 

Dyer chips in: “You get a belly ache.” 

The couple met on the set of the Australian comedy No Activity. Brammall moved to LA in 2016, and Dyer joined him a year later. Colin was born out of those first few months living in America when Dyer was restless. “I wasn’t used to sitting on my hands and I was gearing up for pilot season the following January. Pat said why don’t you go and get a desk, sit down and write something.” 

She spent the first day making screenwriting software work. By the Friday, Brammall recalls, she “came back with essentially a first draft of the pilot”. 

The couple grew up on British comedies, but part of the magic of the show lies in its very Australian-ness. “We felt like we didn’t have anything in our voice,” says Dyer. “If you wanted to see something Irish you could watch Derry Girls, if you wanted to see something English you could watch many things. But Australia didn’t really have a little piece of something that felt very Australian. 

“There were conversations early on like someone was like ‘oh do you want to change that word? Instead of this arvo make it this afternoon?’ And we said no.” 

Much of the comedy is mined from the age gap between Gordon and Ashley. His 80s cultural references are lost on her (she thinks Harry and Sally must be friends of his); he wears a terrible garish hoodie to her birthday party to try to fit in with her cool young friends. It was important to Dyer for there to be times when Ashley is the more composed one. “I wanted moments where she met him in emotional maturity or trumped him. Because otherwise the age gap can seem creepy.” 

“Like it is in life,” says Brammall, quick to take the bait. 

“Shut up,” says Dyer through her laughter. “I wanted them to be mental equals otherwise it’s like why is he with this young woman?” 

The age gap between Ashley and Gordon expands and contracts throughout the series, just as it has done in Dyer and Brammall’s own relationship. They are keen to distance themselves from any direct comparisons, but it’s clear some of it is drawn from their own experience. 

“Paddy is always concerned that I think he’s old,” says Dyer. “I’ll be like ‘d’you want to come to spin with me?’ And he’s like… ‘no’. And I think oh he doesn’t want to go to spin. But then in his head he’s like ‘cos my knees hurt’.” 

“Also, I don’t want to go to spin,” Brammall deadpans. 

“There was definitely a moment when he was 40 and I was 28, just like in the show, and I was like what happens now? Where are my thirties at? I’d heard the thirties were basically the twenties but you know more s---, and I was kind of pumped for that.” 

The age gap is “more of a thing for Paddy”, she suspects, than it is for her. 

“Age is a real thing,” says Brammall. 

“And the wheels are falling off you,” Dyer shoots back.  

“Falling off. It can be an issue occasionally. But more — I wish I was going to be alive for as long as you are.” 

“I don’t like to think about that. Although I’ll be really fit at 60, and he’ll be 72.” 

What was the best thing about working together? “We had a shared experience of our day and I didn’t have to go home at eight, tired, and then relay the day,” says Dyer. 

“So cutting down on the small talk was the best thing about working with me? Yeah, no that’s good.” 

She gets there eventually. “You’re doing your favourite thing with your favourite person.” 

The couple were involved in every step of the process from the writing to the sound mixing and starred in every scene. They moved back to Australia to film it when their daughter, Joni, who they adopted in 2021, was four months old. A “brilliant” nanny looked after her during the day but being apart from her was hard. “Some days we didn’t see Joni at all,” says Brammall. 

Adopting in the US (“for better and for worse, it’s a thing here,” says Brammall) was “a real rollercoaster”. “You just don’t know how it’s going to go, like I suppose you would with a biological pregnancy… At the end of it we just got this beautiful little girl.” 

America is home for the foreseeable. They love the lifestyle in LA. “You can leave your door looking like an absolute turd on a stick and someone will go ‘I love your pants’,” says Dyer. 

But she likes knowing they “can go home” if they want to. “The whole guns in school thing. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.” 

They are waiting to hear if Colin has been picked up for another season and are cautious about believing the hype around series one. “Hollywood often promises you the world and hands you an atlas,” says Dyer. 

Still, they are awards ready – or maybe not, judging by their recent appearance at the Baftas. A clip of them from the ceremony has gone viral. They fluffed the presentation of an award in brilliant fashion, failing to read the crucial line on the envelope informing them the winners wouldn’t be there to collect the award. The comedy routine they riffed in the moment was priceless. If they hadn’t already, they’ll have charmed the British TV world with that performance. 

“I’m always loathe to make people feel like they have a window into our marriage because Ashley and Gordon just simply aren’t us,” Dyer tells me. They’ve also, they admit, had friends tell them that watching Colin From Accounts made them feel like they’d “just hung out with Paddy and Harri”. After spending an hour with them I can see exactly what they mean. 

The final episode of Colin From Accounts airs on May 30 at 10pm on BBC Two. The full series is available to stream on iPlayer now