We only spent 95 minutes with Harry Burns and Sally Albright. A mere 93 minutes with Alvy Singer and Annie Hall. And just 91 minutes with Harold Chasen and Maude Chardin. Great romantic comedies make us fall for the protagonists quickly. They arrive fully formed, characters with quirks and preferences and histories and longings. This week, Australian TV show Colin from Accounts returns for its third and final season – a run that feels both fleeting and fulfilled.
When we left Gordon (Patrick Brammall) and Ash (Harriet Dyer), they were on the dancefloor at a friend’s wedding, with Gordon down on one knee. Three years have passed: Ash moved to a hospital in Warrnambool and met fisherman David (Thomas Cocoquerel) while Gordon stayed in Sydney with their dog Colin, blew through his savings and ended up with corporate lawyer Chelsea (Nikki Shiels). A chance encounter – Gordon becomes Ash’s patient – brings them back into each other’s orbits. “It’s probably good to acknowledge that we don’t work well together,” Gordon tells her. “Don’t we?” she asks, in response. That’s the question that these final episodes unravel. Can Gordon and Ash – whose worlds first collided when they caused the car crash that injured Colin – make it work?
The chemistry between Brammall and Dyer – who co-created the show and are married – means that audiences will always be rooting for Gordon and Ash, even while they spiral into self-destructive recklessness. He is a paragon of authenticity, the owner of a craft brewery who is refusing to sell out (though gambling debts may force his hand), while she is a screwball dynamo, the sort of doctor who rolls her eyes at hypochondriac patients. They are not outsiders; the show encourages the idea that they are attractive and eligible. “I still don’t know what a hot doctor like you is doing with a guy like me,” David tells Ash, hopelessly. And yet they are both terminally immature (“I want to have kids at some point!” Gordon, a man in his late-forties, whines) and selfish. The differences in their age (Ash is in her early thirties) and station are mitigated by a shared worldview.
This third season flips the script, converting their odd-couple, on-off relationship into something that feels inevitable, gravitational. In order to sand the edges off their adultery, the writing makes David and Chelsea monstrously unappealing (a romcom trope, sure, but one that feels a bit beneath the show). David is unambitious and stinks of fish – “Your boyfriend doesn’t smell great,” Gordon’s brother Heavy (Justin Rosniak) tells Ash, “but at least he’s boring and licks his fingers a lot.” Chelsea, meanwhile, is a controlling, Type A helicopter girlfriend. Some viewers, who have already invested heavily in Gordon and Ash’s relationship, might feel that they don’t need to be pushed so firmly into wanting a reunion. But the show has already dabbled in broader comedic turns, such as Ash’s mother, Lynelle (Helen Thomson) and her oily husband Lee (Darren Gilshenan), who return here as militant men’s rights activists. There are big, bold (often political) jokes that generate laugh out loud moments.
And when they’re together on-screen, Brammall and Dyer always create something special. Brammall (familiar now to cinema audiences as Andy’s love interest from The Devil Wears Prada 2) has an easy charm. He is relaxed without being a schlub, grounded without being a cynic. It makes Gordon’s relationship with Ash feel plausible, even though she is significantly younger. And Dyer resists any pressure to be the straight man, batting back witticisms and laughing demurely. Ash is a bundle of charisma (she first met Gordon by flashing a nipple at him, remember) who disarms the men in her orbit. So often in romantic comedies, the women are tasked with the romance (getting drenched in the rain or being “just a girl, standing in front of a boy”) while the men get to do the comedy. In Colin from Accounts, the balance has always been immaculate. They are both funny, both hopelessly romantic.
This final season resets proceedings. It requires them to start their courtship anew, to flirt again and remember what drew them together in the first place. It allows the show to rerun its greatest hits. Boy meets girl, traffic accident, injured dog, boy gets girl. And at the heart of all that is the wistful electricity between Gordon and Ash, a boisterous yearning that carries Colin from Accounts into the pantheon of great television romcoms. These three series feel like they’ve slipped by, yet Gordon and Ash (and Colin) feel totally real. Flawed, yet loveable.