‘Colin From Accounts’ is the cleverest romantic comedy out there
Summary
‘Colin from Accounts’ is a clever, relatable and ultimately optimistic look at modern romance
There is a screenwriting technique referred to as “Saving the Cat". This suggests that a hero, before plunging into the story, perform a small act of pure goodness that instantly makes the viewer root for them, no matter how flawed or foolish they later become. This is narrative seduction at its shiniest and most basic: think of Aladdin giving his stolen bread to starving children, or Ripley tenderly (and literally) saving Jonesy the cat amid the carnage of Alien. In short, it’s the cinematic equivalent of buying the first round before the bar brawl breaks out.
The delightful Australian romantic-comedy series Colin from Accounts (with both its seasons finally streaming in India on JioCinema) goes in a diametrically opposite direction. The show does naturally involve an odd-couple and a meet-cute—as mandated by the genre—but far from saving a cat, the show’s two protagonists first bump heads when one of them runs a car over a small dog (the titular Colin) after being distracted by the other’s nipple. Woof. Consider this both trigger-warning as well as prophecy: love begins by accident.
Created by real-life husband and wife Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer—who play brewery owner Gordon and medical student Ashley—Colin from Accounts is a clever, relatable and ultimately optimistic look at modern romance by way of two protagonists who, while flawed, really want to make this damn thing work. Having injured a dog—and racked up a $12,000 bill to get him wheels instead of hind-legs—the two are forced to stay in touch and put up with each other’s respective nonsense. The fact that the creators are writing and enacting the arguments, gives the show a refreshing balance and fairness. As all romantics can be, they’re both jerks.
Part of what makes this coupling odd is the age difference. He’s in his 40s, she’s not quite 30. This gap both attracts Ashley as well as makes Gordon insecure. The first time he mentions When Harry met Sally, she asks if those are his friends. He has an increasingly unused drum kit in his bedroom, she has tequila in her handbag. In the second season, Ashley speaks about the importance of their injured furry friend to their beleaguered romance that suffers from “age gap, different friendship groups, your knees". It’s the uniquely named Colin who holds them together, becoming what they have in common.
The romantic banter is clever and irreverent, forever cutting through predictability and tropes. There are oddballs around every bend—including Ashley’s irrepressibly vivacious mother Lynelle (Helen Thomson) who starts an organisation called “Women against Women against Men"—yet the show somehow humanises (most of) them. We’re all bonkers, and there is often a reason for our denial and our delusions, if one looks closely enough. This show is affectionate and empathetic enough to do so, yet also—crucially—world-weary enough to roll its eyes at a lot.
When Gordon describes an ex-girlfriend as ancient history (“Ancient Greece," he reassures), Ashley realises that, as someone much younger, she doesn’t have any reference to that timeline. She hears about a pickup-trick Gordon used to use at parties when he was a 20-something and cringes, calling it out for being “creepy-adjacent". He’s been sexually active for decades longer than her, and he owns a bar—yet she can’t wrap her head around his sexual history. Gordon, like all ageing men acutely aware how quickly they are getting older, cares about history—particularly holding on to his own history. “Should Leonard Cohen have deleted So long Marianne," he reasons desperately, “when he started seeing Suzanne?"
She looks at him blankly, unimpressed by an older man talking about even older men.
The potential turn-on about an older man, it then appears, may not actually be the (undeniably superior) soundtrack of his youth and adulthood, but in fact the possibility that he—older and somewhat wiser, hopefully—may be willing to step up to the plate, whatever the plate may be. One of my favourite lines in the first season has Ashley telling Gordon just what is attracting her to him so much. “You just got 40% hotter because you took responsibility," she sighs. “It was hot."
There is, of course, no blueprint for relationships. Gordon’s best friend and partner at the brewery, Chiara (a wonderful Genevieve Hegney), can be calm and collected at the workplace, but utterly heedless in love. Ashley’s closest friend Megan (Emma Harvie) is all impulse and judgement, frequently silly but quick to call out Ashley. When she hears about the bizarre and canine-endangering way by which Ashley met Gordon, her big question is about the breast that was flashed: “Was it your party tit?" “Not even," sighs Ashley. “It was the small one."
Yet—wouldn’t you know it—this turns out to be a flash of love. Love, that sneaky thing, the one that comes up from behind when we least expect it, that robs us of our sleep and upends our lives. Much like a dog does. “Happiness is a warm puppy," Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz once wrote, impossibly but immediately getting one over on The Beatles. At one point in Colin from Accounts, both lovers plan quite seriously to steal a Border Terrier from a little girl. This sounds reprehensible and unforgivable, but—as with a relationship—it would be even worse not to try. Go get ‘em.
