I know I wasn’t the only critic who walked out of the TCA premiere of Colin From Accounts Season 2 this past summer with a new show to tune in for. The hilarious Australian comedy series, co-created and co-starring real-life couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, had me rolling from minute one. While the show does partly revolve around an adorable dog — “Colin From Accounts” is the name given to the pooch by its lead characters — it also follows the highs and lows of the romance between brewery owner Gordon (Brammall) and med student Ashley (Dyer). When Gordon accidentally hits poor Colin with his car (after being playfully flashed by Ashley in the street), the resulting financial responsibility brings these two humans together in ways they never could have anticipated. Season 1 wrapped up with Gordon and Ash seriously rethinking their relationship due to several factors, but ultimately deciding to commit to each other anyway. They’re also more determined than ever to recover Colin, who they’d initially given up to another family — and Season 2 picks up with them humorously fixated on getting their dog back.

Ahead of the premiere of Season 2 on Paramount+, Collider had the opportunity to speak with Dyer and Brammall about the return of Colin From Accounts. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the co-creators, writers, executive producers, and stars discuss what the biggest changes were between Season 1 and 2, why they didn’t initially set out to make a rom-com, and what it’s like to work with their adorable four-legged scene partner. The two also reveal why one Season 2 episode scared them, which of Ashley’s medical moments were drawn from real-life experiences, how many seasons they’d like to make before ending the show for good, and more.

COLLIDER: I left the premiere screening on the Paramount lot a changed person. On the flight back, I watched the first four episodes of Season 1, and then I got home and I told my husband, “You need to sit down with me and watch this show.” And now it’s become one of our new favorite shows. In terms of an actual question, with your approach to the production of Season 1 versus coming back to make more of this show, what was the biggest difference this time around?

HARRIET DYER: We just knew the characters better, so in terms of the writing of it, suddenly Lynelle had an actor attached. Everyone had a voice and a face that was fun to write for. Once the scripts were done, and we were shooting the thing, we just remembered to have fun, because so much of Colin’s feel is like a vibe. It’s a tone. We just wanted to keep the crew and the cast happy, and every day had challenges for sure, but the production of it was a joy.

The edit was tricky, because that was the last thing. That’s the thing that Carly’s going to watch with her husband. That’s the thing that everyone’s going to watch, and there’s still potential when you’re on set, but when you’re in the edit, there’s no more potential. That is the lock. That’s when it got a bit scarier. But Season 2 production, I think we were just excited.

PATRICK BRAMMALL: We learned so much during Season 1. Once we started to hit the ground in Season 2, it was like, “Oh, we know this terrain. We’ve been here before, and we can enjoy it more.” But equally, that was tempered by… Season 1 was so well-received in so many territories that we wanted to be able to reach that high watermark again. In fact, we were starting a little bit, if you’re thinking in that sense, behind the starting line, because we don’t have the element of surprise. People are invested. People have an idea about what they think the show should be and what the characters should do.

DYER: But maybe that was actually a positive in the end. I think we looked at it as a negative, but it could have been a positive that you’ve already got an in-built.

BRAMMALL: Yeah, I discovered that it was both those things — because it was good to identify, so you could resist the temptation to do fan service, and actually continue creating and expanding in the way that’s satisfying to us to do. But all in all, it was great. It was kind of amazing to do a second [season], and we’re really happy with the result as well.

Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer Wanted To Get Weird in ‘Colin From Accounts’ Season 2

Season 2 does feel more experimental — style-wise, format-wise. “Waterfall,” specifically, feels like an episode where the two of you are pushing the boundaries of what people think this show is and what you can do with these characters. Or the scene where Colin’s having a dream. Was that more of a consequence, though, of feeling like you had the freedom to take more of those risks in a second season — as opposed to Season 1, where you’re really trying to establish who these people are at the jump?

BRAMMALL: Sure.

DYER: Yeah. Once you have something, you can kind of mess with it, can’t you? And Patty and I, we like it when things get a bit weird. Things like the dog dream, for instance, that didn’t have to be there. It didn’t lead to anything. It’s just texture. And it was actually a pitch from our director. He wanted to just do one angle of that. He wanted to do one angle of that truck hitting the person that would maybe be Colin’s… but then that’s all we had. It was our idea in the edit to add other bits, his old families, that girl that had him for a while.

BRAMMALL: Just the trauma stacking up,

DYER: And we had a lot of fun in the edit doing that. It’s sound design too. It’s that particular dog whimper that they make when they’re dreaming. It’s very funny. But Ep 5 was a real shake up, and it scared us a little bit. We didn’t know if…

BRAMMALL: It would work or not.

DYER: People would get annoyed because we pulled them apart so much, but people loved it.

BRAMMALL: And it had more of a narrative drive. Also in Episode 6, the way we swapped it out, we ended it, and also similarly with the ending of Episode 7. 7 gets very silly, and then the end, Lee sets up with his guitar, and you think, “Here we go,” and we quickly swap it to quite an emotional place. So there are all these little risks, but they’re exciting risks to take.

DYER: The back half of Season 2 has a lot of ups and downs for sure.

I feel like it’s not inaccurate to say that this show is a rom-com, especially because the romance between the characters and their relationship, even as they’re navigating those ups and downs, is a major part of the show. Was it always your intention to equally lean into both halves of that label, or did it just kind of emerge naturally by embracing the conceit of the show?

DYER: I think it emerged naturally. I don’t think we ever set out to make a rom-com. We’re also calling it a bit of a relationship comedy because a rom-com, especially by Americans’ experience, is much more joke, joke, set up joke or something.

BRAMMALL: Well, you’re hitting certain tropes, aren’t you, in a rom-com? We did sell it, and we were pitching it as Australia’s first rom-com just as a point of difference, because Australia’s never done a rom-com as a TV show.

DYER: Ever.

BRAMMALL: But it started out, really, in our minds as a relationship comedy.

DYER: And it’s just a slightly zoomed-out version of everything that we watch, isn’t it? Even if you watch a multi-cam, something sad happens and then someone makes a joke, and so we were doing that, but flipping it. It’s the light and the dark living right there next to each other. It’s the comedy/tragedy masks. It is kind of there in everything, and it really is present in the stuff that we love the most. I love it when I’m watching something really quite dramatic, and then there’s an actor like Sam Rockwell who’s so funny as well. It’s movies and performers like that that attract us, because both things should be able to exist at once.

BRAMMALL: But it primarily has to be funny. Well, no, two things. It has to be funny, and it has to be real. Those are the main two filters that we put everything through. Once you do that, and once you cast actors who have funny bones, then we can traverse both that light and the dark.

One of the things that struck me watching Season 1 and continuing into Season 2 is that so much of what happens with Gordon and Ash feels rooted in real. How much of that is the two of you taking a kernel or a nugget of something that’s happened to one of you, or have heard from a friend, and then just finding ways to amp it up? Or do you even really need to exaggerate it for the sake of comedy?

DYER: A lot of the medical stuff comes straight from my friend, who’s a doctor. The foreskin thing in Season 1 came from her, and actually the…

BRAMMALL: That was Season 2.

DYER: Sorry, what happened in Season 1?

BRAMMALL: Season 1 was peeing in the drawer.

DYER: Well, that wasn’t medical, but that was…

BRAMMALL: Oh, it was sewing up…

DYER: Sewing up after birth. None of this is exaggerated. This is all straight from my friend. And actually, even the arm in the ice in the baby bassinet, she’s seen that. I just asked her for the weird and wacky wonderful shit she’s seen in hospitals. But then, in terms of nuggets, there are definitely things we expand on. I have fallen asleep on a train. I woke up at the end of a stop in Sydney, but I didn’t lose my bag. I wasn’t robbed. There’s always a jumping off point that definitely could happen.

BRAMMALL: I have a Big Green Egg, for instance.

DYER: He does have a Big Green Egg. It’s his favorite thing.

BRAMMALL: I love it.

DYER: But my mum isn’t a men’s rights activist. She thinks that… She worries about men. That’s an example of…

BRAMMALL: Making a small thing and then blowing it way up.

DYER: My mum’s birthday is on international Men’s Day, and she thinks that’s wonderful, but she would never run a WAWAM thing, but the kernel’s still there.

BRAMMALL: And also, with WAWAM, originally, in the script, they called themselves the Honeybadgers, and then one of our producers said, “Hey, there’s kind of a reality star celebrity in Australia.”

DYER: Like a Bachelor or something,

BRAMMALL: I think it was Ex-Rugby Union or something, and he calls himself the Honeybadger. So it would be confusing. And then we came up with WAWAM, which is so much better than Honeybadgers.

Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer on Working With the Real ‘Colin From Accounts’
Image via Paramount+

I remember you saying at the screening that the dog you work with — is it more than one dog for the show?

DYER: It’s one dog and there’s a backup if we need it.

BRAMMALL: Mainly one. We do have two.

You’d said that he’s never ruined a take, or he’s never been the cause of a ruined take. And I just wanted to follow up on that a little and get your take on working with such an adorable four-legged costar.

DYER: Children and animals. We have had issues with some of the kids sometimes, but we’ve never had an issue with that dog. In fact, he’s too good. He’s just so still.

BRAMMALL: He’s very chill. I remember seeing him the first time in Season 2 going, “Hey, Zachy” and he was like, “Hi. I remember you.” It wasn’t like a happy reunion or anything. It was just like… he’s a pro.

DYER: We have a dog. You walk through the door, and they act like you’ve been dead for years. Zac is just a chiller. He’s a human in a dog suit. Maybe he smokes weed, d’you know? He’s just like, “What do you want? Where do you want me to be? I’ll do that.” He’s so chill.

BRAMMALL: Provided there’s a turkey or chicken treat in that spot.

How Many More Seasons Are in Store for ‘Colin From Accounts’?
Image via Paramount+

Harriet, your sister directs an episode this season. Is that something either of you would ever be interested in doing in a future season?

DYER: We’ve talked about it, and we still may do it in so many ways. It would save time, because we have a vision for sure, and our directors are amazing and offer up a bajillion wonderful things that we’d never think of. We feel like we could probably give it a go, but we’ve got a kid as well, and there’s that extra couple of hours of prep a day, a week or whatever. That would really probably mean that she wouldn’t spend time with either of her parents while we shoot. So we’ve had to crawl it back. But we are actively producing every day and looking at the scripts every day and then on set just as actors every day. It’s three hats already, and four feels low. When you also put your parent hat on, then you’ve got five, and it’s just one too many.

BRAMMALL: Too many hats.

DYER: We thought about actually directing Ep 5, because I could have been mostly looking at his stuff when he was by himself and vice versa, but it was better not.

Do you have a long-term plan for how many seasons you’d like to make?

BRAMMALL: I don’t think we subscribe to the, no offense, American idea of doing it until people stop watching. We grew up watching Faulty Towers or The Office and stuff, these things that did two seasons and a Christmas special. I’m not suggesting we’re going to do that, but there are two kinds of thoughts, I suppose. One is: How long does this have good juice? This story? You don’t want it to get thin and then people go, “It was about time to finish.”

DYER: Leaving them wanting more would be the idea. Also, it’s so much between Pat and I. Like Season 2 took probably, from start to finish, 14 months, 15 months. It was like March to May. That’s every day, and we get occasional bounceback emails from people who are on holiday doing this or that, and we’re like, when’s our holiday? It is such a big job between the two of us, and we are the only two from, well actually, our producers are as well, but we’re solely on it, and it does eat up our life in a beautiful way. But with all of that, I’ll say, maybe three or four [seasons].

Colin From Accounts Season 2 is available to stream on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+