Why did none of you tell me about Colin From Accounts?

Maybe it’s because I have a high bar for televised situation comedies. The characters work best in a presumably believable relationship, and the situations for each episode must make some sort of logical sense. All In The Family worked for me, so did M*A*S*H* and Cheers and The Big Bang Theory.

And I also have a high bar for romantic comedies. You need the characters to possess some sort of charisma and spark between them. And honestly, the closest I’ve ever seen for a show with that kind of romantic spark between its leads was Pushing Daisies. Yeah, I used to geek out over that show, and damn the writers’ strike that destroyed it. Feh.

Last weekend, however, I discovered a new television series on the Paramount+ channel, a two-season Australian romantic comedy called Colin From Accounts. And probably the best way to describe the show … is to let you watch a preview.

The lead actress and co-writer for this series is Harriet Dyer, who I’ve enjoyed from her time in the Australian soap Love Child, smiled more than once in her two-season stint on the American TV series American Auto, and winced at her miscasting in the supernatural procedural The In-Between.

Patrick Brammall, her real-life husband, is the male lead in Colin From Accounts, you might know him from his stint on the CBS procedural supernatural thriller Evil. He also co-writes half the episodes on this show.

And the dog? That’s Colin. Colin From Accounts. The pilot episode explains everything.

But yeah, this show is hilarious. It’s ribald, it’s profane, and it’s emotionally heart-pulling. It’s almost like the FX comedy series You’re The Worst, where the main characters circumvent the usual “boy meets girl” trope by adding outside influences and emotions – in this case, Patrick Brammall’s character Gordon just survived testicular cancer; while Harriet Dyer’s character Ashley has some emotional damage of her own.

Just do me a favor. Set aside a weekend, get some popcorn, and binge-watch this series. You will not be disappointed. One note – if you’re not used to Australian slang and patois, you might consider turning on the captioning just to catch all the banter and barter. This is good stuff.

Trust me on this.