Colin Van Accounts (BBC Two)
What a joy. Colin from Accounts, the funniest thing to come out of Australia since Lady Edna Everage is back – and has wakefulness in its sights.
The rom-com, starring and written by real-life husband and wife Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, has been delivering laugh-out-loud jokes since it first aired in Britain three years ago.
If you’ve never seen it, be sure to check out the first two series on iPlayer.
As you would expect from an Oz comedy, this one is sweary, beery and scatalogical. But at its heart is a charming romance, made all the more believable because of the obvious chemistry between the two leads.
Brammall, who from tomorrow also stars in the Apple TV police thriller Last Seen, is a scruffy, accident-prone, permanently naked bar owner named Gordon.
Dyer plays Ashley, a young doctor who is wound tighter than a ball of rubber bands.
The couple care for a paralyzed Border Terrier named Colin. They are clearly crazy about each other, and the dog makes an adorable baby replacement.
It’s a simple story with Happy, Waggy Ending written all over it.
The rom-com, starring and written by real-life husband and wife Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, has been delivering laughs since it first premiered in Britain three years ago.
Only Gordon and Ash have no experience with happy relationships and constantly ruin them.
The last series ended with Gordon down on one knee in the middle of someone else’s wedding reception, humiliating the couple with a marriage proposal so awkward that Ash eventually left him.
The final episodes jump forward three years and reunite the pair in a chance encounter.
Neither of them can do more than chatter and stutter, but they might as well shout, “I never stopped loving you,” because a car crash is happening in the background. . . and the duo doesn’t even notice.
Their love affair is one long, awkward misunderstanding, like that moment when you go to kiss and end up bumping your head or clashing teeth.
I could happily see them doing this from now until Christmas, but this time the show also calls out Australia’s obsession with outright racial politics.
And that in itself is a pleasure.
It’s fair to say that political correctness isn’t easy for most Australians. Gordon is completely baffled when confronted by a trainee GP with a clipboard, who won’t allow him to discuss medical problems until he completes an endless questionnaire.
First question: ‘Do you need an interpreter?’ That made me laugh so much that I missed the next line and had to replay it: “Are you of Aboriginal descent?”
“Apparently not,” replies a desperate Gordon, who looks like he might get a sunburn just from walking past a microwave.
“It’s not clear,” says the ultra-awakened medic. ‘I am five percent Cantonese myself.’
What do you say to that? “Congratulations,” Gordon murmurs.
The fact that this is all happening in front of Ash makes it all the more painfully funny. I’ve been beaten.
