Hilarious new BBC romcom 'Colin from Accounts'

And in husband-and-wife duo Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, the quirky Australian series Colin from Accounts has hit the nail on the head.

Glitch star Brammall plays Gordon, who is driving to work one morning when what turns out to be somewhat of an extreme sliding doors moment occurs.

He stops at an intersection for Ashley (Dyer), who decides to flash at him.

Unfortunately, Gordon gets distracted by the attractive stranger, and takes off without noticing a stray dog has run in front of his car.

Before long, the the two complete strangers are at a vet, (who happens to be Gordon’s ex), trying to decide if a dog they didn’t know existed an hour ago is worth $12,000 and a (dog’s) lifetime of care. Animal lovers – don’t worry, they’re not going to let the dog die!

Despite their unequal financial situations and personalities – he’s a successful businessman who owns a trendy microbrewery, she’s an all-over-the-shop medical student whose tendency to act without thinking lands her in all sorts of bother – neither of them can figure out an easy exit from the injured dog and massive vets’ bill situation.

Over the next few weeks, we will see the complex pair navigate life together with the permanently injured hound, who they later name Colin From Accounts, and trying to summon up brave enough to show their true self, scars and all.

The acclaimed comedy first came about when The Invisible Man and Love Child star Dyer got bored one day in lockdown and put pen to paper to write a TV show.

A short week later, she had an earnest, bitingly witty comedy series on her hands that would eventually be snapped up by Australian streaming service, Binge.

“I was like, mate, this is actually really good,” her husband Brammall told news.com.au of reading the draft script for the first time.

“She had never written before, this was her first go at it. And we’re so proud of what we’ve done with it.”

The two main characters’ stinging one-liners and awkward interactions feel entirely off the cuff, and given their close relationship off-screen, it would be fair to assume a large chunk of this painfully affecting relationship portrait was improvised.

But that’s not the case, as Brammall explains to all.

“I think 95 per cent of it is scripted actually,” he says.

“We would sometimes do a few takes before they’d let us improvise a bit, but most of what you see was in the script.

“We wanted it to feel natural but there was a lot of effort put into the script to make it seem that way, so that’s really the biggest compliment we could receive.

“It was definitely a lot of work, but we just had so much fun. We really were laughing every day.

“I think, honestly, the dog was the most professional actor on set.”