Paramount Plus debuts the Australian comedy Colin From Accounts on Thursday, November 9. Colin is a dog. Ashley is a woman and Gordon is a man.
Ashley is hustling to work and Gordon is driving. He stops to let her cross the street, and she thanks him by flashing her breast. A moment later, Gordon, flummoxed by the flash, strikes a dog with his car.
It is the opposite of the meet-cute, but Ashley and Gordon nonetheless enter each other’s lives, and a connection slowly ensues. They drive to the vet together, and debate getting the dog treated versus putting him down. The latter appears to be a whole lot cheaper.
“Twelve thousand dollars?” thunders Gordon. “It’s a dog!”
They opt for putting him down but don’t quite have the nerve to see it through. Ashley and Gordon then set about nursing the wounded pooch back to health — the vet tells them they “may need to manually express his bladder and bowels,” and he leaves the vet with wheels helping out his hind legs. (The vet’s name is Yvette, which causes a bit of confusion.)
In the process, Ashley and Gordon get to know one another.
Ashley is not allowed to have a pet in her rented home, so she essentially moves into reluctant Gordon’s. Ashley is a medical student and Gordon, a bit older, owns a brewery. Ashley has an overbearing mother and does not do well on the dating scene. Gordon seems to have ex-girlfriends all over Sydney, including the vet. Ashley enjoys a drink now and then, a bit more now, it appears, than then.
In the pilot, Ashley is chatting about the breast-flashing incident with a co-worker.
“Is he cute?” the woman asks.
“Yeah, but his back legs are f***ed,” Ashley responds.
“No, the guy.”
Ashley and Gordon slowly realize the dog does not have a name. They decide to avoid cheesy dog names, and would rather give him a generic human one. Such as Colin From Accounts Payable.
Harriet Dyer plays Ashley and Patrick Brammall plays Gordon. The two are married in real life. As one might expect, they’re good together, with natural chemistry. They wallow in the awkwardness of the characters’ initial time together, as embarrassing traits — Ashley peeing in strange places, such as Gordon’s bedside cabinet, and Gordon owning a unicycle — are revealed.
Ashley and Gordon are good, fun characters and the viewer can’t help but wonder how they’ll fare as their relationship evolves. The writing is witty; we enjoyed how Ashley, on a visit to Costco in the second episode, is constantly mistaken for a superstore employee, her frustration a little more intense each successive time.
The humor is, however, overreliant on the bathroom stuff, such as Ashley realizing, a little too late, that Gordon’s toilet won’t flush, her peeing-in-strange-places issue and Gordon’s last name, which turns out to be Crapp.
Colin From Accounts debuted in Australia last year. Paramount Plus says the show “is about flawed, funny people choosing each other and being brave enough to show their true selves, scars and all, as they navigate life together.”
Ashley and Gordon are indeed flawed, and they’re funny as well.
