Colin from Accounts

Colin from Accounts is a warm, sharply performed romantic comedy, with a modest weakness for jokes that need not be quite so coarse. Creators Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall understand how tiring it can be to fancy somebody who keeps saying the wrong thing. They give Ashley and Gordon enough awkwardness to make their attraction funny without making their company a chore. Much of the pleasure comes from watching two people struggle to conduct what ought to be an ordinary conversation.

Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall are good at making bickering feel like a conversation neither person quite wants to end. Neither plays the embarrassment as an invitation to despise the character, which matters when the laughs depend on poor judgement. We laughed at Ashley and Gordon’s awkward exchanges, then found ourselves hoping they would stop making things harder for each other. Their attraction remains apparent even when their words are doing an efficient job of concealing it.

Patrick Brammall’s writing allows both characters to be defensive, silly and more revealing than they intend. Neither partner gets to be permanently cleverer than the other, so there is no fixed division of sensible adult and troublesome child. Directors Matthew Moore and Trent O’Donnell keep our attention on the uneasy rapport between the performers. Matt Blackman’s music is less important to the appeal than their timing. At 30 minutes an episode, there is also a useful limit on how long the series can leave its characters talking themselves into trouble.

Helen Thomson’s Lynelle makes a strong impression in a supporting cast that gives the leads useful competition. The ensemble helps with a familiar problem for romantic comedy: the danger that everyone outside the couple will exist simply to discuss the couple. Here, there is enough comic personality around Ashley and Gordon to prevent that enclosed feeling. Their awkwardness belongs to a larger social life, and the series benefits from letting other people be funny.

The weaker passages arrive when the series seems too pleased with its own coarseness. Toilet humour can be funny, but some of it feels like an easy way to prolong embarrassment when the dialogue has already done the job. Those stretches are less involving because the predicament starts to feel arranged for a laugh. It is a modest reservation, though a viewer with a low tolerance for bodily indignities may make more of it.

Romantic comedies often ask us to accept a couple because the story has clearly reserved them for each other. Ashley and Gordon’s confusion and defensiveness make that expectation less comfortable, while the sillier humour stops the emotional passages becoming solemn. The series is most affecting when somebody’s vulnerability becomes apparent without the comedy having to stop and announce a change of subject. If prickly company is your idea of a pleasant evening, these two are worth getting to know.