Colin From Accounts creators explain how to cast a TV dog

A version of this article originally appeared in Entertainment Weekly's Awardist Emmys Kickoff special print issue.

It begins with the oddest meet cute ever. Single gal Ashley (Harriet Dyer) flashes single guy Gordon (Patrick Brammall) while crossing in front of his car, causing him to run over a dog, which they rush to the vet. And thus the tone is set for one of the funniest romcoms in years, Colin From Accounts. Created and written by real-life married couple Dyer and Brammall, the Aussie series (which airs here on Paramount+) won both laughs and hearts with its irreverent take on a seemingly mismatched pair brought together through having to care for an injured border terrier.

A lot of the show’s onscreen generational gap humor is mined from 35-year-old Dyer and 48-year-old Brammall’s offscreen relationship. “It doesn't matter how close to the bone it is,” says Brammall. “If it's awkward, and as long as it's funny, we have to use it.” That includes the time someone mistook Brammall for being Dyer’s dad at an airport. “To be fair, we just got off the long-haul flight,” he insists. “She looked fresh as a spring apple. I looked like an old leather bag.”

While the creators have been flying high with accolades for their writing and acting (including wins this week from the Gotham TV Awards for Breakthrough Comedy Series and Outstanding Performance in a Comedy for Dyer, as well as the Best Narrative Comedy Series award at Australia’s AACTA Awards), the pair can’t help but be upstaged by their adorable canine costar. We spoke to the two humans in charge about the inspiration for their characters’ unique introduction, the different sensibilities of international audiences, what we can expect in season 2, and what it was like working with their very good boy.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Every romantic comedy starts with the meet cute, so how did you all come up with a flashing being the thing that kicks off their story here?

HARRIET DYER: The germ of it is, I pushed a [baby buggy] into a pole once when I was nannying. There was a cute dude nearby and I was like, “Oh, yikes, this stuff happens.” I'm a fairly distracted driver, but I am, stereotypically, the less distracted gender. I feel like men notice sexy things more than women, but I'm like, “Look, I'm running into s---!” I'm either a lot more male than I present or these guys are doing a lot and not mentioning it to me.

PATRICK BRAMMALL: The male voice does spring from you pretty effortlessly.

You all talk about pie charts on this show, so in your pie chart for the flashing car accident, how much blame goes to each person for running over the dog?

DYER: That's why they need to split the vet bills. It's like an ongoing thing with them. He hit the dog, but I did flash my nipple to distract him.

BRAMMALL: It’s probably 60-40 his fault. The extra 10 is by virtue of the fact that he was the one who struck the dog,

DYER: I would even say 70-30.

I’m pretty familiar with the casting process when it comes to humans, but what is dog casting like? How exactly does that work?

BRAMMALL: The advice we had was to get a dog who's trainable and we can work from there. And then we got a book of different dogs. It was almost like a flip book.

DYER: It was like Tinder.

BRAMMALL: There was a Boston terrier, a French bulldog, a dalmatian. And we just flipped through.

DYER: You knew straight away some of these dogs are way too fancy. We thought a poodle or a sausage dog were very noticeable dogs. They were too flashy. You'd know when they go missing. And it turns out that a border terrier is its own fancy breed, but they look so scruffy. He looks like the everyman of dogs.

BRAMMALL: An everydog. You want a dog that on the Venn diagram everyone can kind of get on board with. You don't want people going, “Oh, that's too yappy.” Or “That's too scary.”

DYER: And he never ever messed up. We never had to go again for the dog. In fact, he was a little too good. We'd be like, “F---, he looks kind of computer-generated.” I had to ask the trainer to walk behind the camera with a treat, because otherwise he looked simulated.

BRAMMALL: He's just sort of sitting there.

DYER: So still. I don't know if he's on some sort of medication. I want a prescription for whatever Colin is on.

BRAMMALL: Yeah, whatever he's got, I want some of that too. He's so chill. He's on cloud nine. He's very happy to be there, let's just put it that way.

Why a brewery for Gordon? How did that become his profession?

BRAMMALL: In a very early draft, I was a sign writer and you worked at a cinema at the candy bar.

DYER: A brewery felt social. I wrote the pilot for this in 2017, and craft beer was really kind of a new thing popping off then. Thankfully, these microbreweries are still a thing, but it was really popping off back then and is probably why I chose it.

I have to say, I got viscerally angry with Ashley’s friends in the birthday brewery episode. Is that just because I’m an old fuddy-duddy now, or were they particularly obnoxious?

DYER: Do you know what's interesting? Our editor of that episode looked at reviews, and that episode is reviewed the poorest. It's still reviewed well, but it made people mad. And his take on it was that millennials were like, “We're not all like that!” But I actually think it just annoyed people. I think whether you were older or younger or male or female. My girlfriends from high school messaged me and they're like, “Ashley was so rude!” and I was like, “Calm down, okay? People are rude. These characters don't have to be perfect. That's the whole point.”

BRAMMALL: But that's great. It meant that people were already invested in the characters, and we love to make people go, “Oh, why are you making that stupid choice?” because they're emotionally attached to the characters. That's a great result for us, and so much fun to shoot.

DYER: And watching him sit there in that green hoodie and his little ripped pants with his tight jeans, I was just dying in love.

BRAMMALL: And it's tricky because I'm super cool in real life. So it's a real stretch.

How do you all settle things when you do not agree on a creative decision?

BRAMMALL: It's pretty rare that we have differences. Whoever wrote the episode will probably have the final call on it. But honestly, if one of us feels that strongly about it... I don't think we've ever had a thing where we both felt that strongly about it.

DYER: No, one of us has always just bowed out and notices that the other person cares more about this particular thing. Sometimes I've been like, “Hey, Patty, I really will die on this hill,” and all you have to say is that. I've got a real gut response sometimes, so maybe I win a bit more.

How much does work life bleed into your personal life?

DYER: I should say there are times when I'm like, “Hey, Pat, we can't talk about Colin tonight. I'm tired.” But then sometimes we will just be walking the dog or something and we'll be out somewhere and we'll have an idea that delights us, or we will reminisce on something we shot that we just loved. And so, although it is a big thing that we're working on, it definitely still tickles us. We quote season 2, which hasn't come out yet, to each other all the time.

Has the reaction been any different from international audiences as opposed to Australian? Are the comedic sensibilities similar or a bit different?

DYER: It absolutely crushed in the U.K. That was because it was available on a free service. which anyone can get. But their humor, I think they loved it. Obviously, we are a penal colony from England. We have a connection there, but they just loved it. Australia also loved it.

BRAMMALL: I think one of the things I noticed in terms of difference, in the U.K. no one even mentioned that a dog gets hit by a car. It was just funny. It was all part of the funny meet cute. And in some of the American response, we've noticed in some reviews they write, “Now, we should say a dog is injured, but it's okay.” A lot of people are concerned about the welfare of the dog. That's a big cultural difference. And we get it. We are in love with our dog, but culturally it's just a different thing.

DYER: And it didn't come up at all in Australia either. Australians are largely, “Stand in the backyard. Your dog stays outside.” Whereas here you can get it a seat on a plane. It's kind of wild.

Well, I'm a cat guy. I didn't care what happened to the dog, so it's all good.

DYER: Great. We should warn you, in season 2, we kill a lot of cats.

WATCH IT! So if season 1 was these two coming together through this dog, what is season 2 thematically going to be about?

DYER: We kind of surmised it as if season 1 was “Will they or won't they,” season 2 is “Should they have?” And so that's where we're at, and it's a lot of fun going through the baggage and “Wait, who actually are you?”

BRAMMALL: Yeah, now that the dust has settled, it's like, “Hang on, who are you?” At the end of season 1, it's like, “Let's go get our dog back.” So we pick up season 2 and they're trying to get their dog back.

DYER: We had to do that in a satisfying way. It was tricky plotting. You didn't want everything to be so easy where it's like, “Oh, they just got it back. That's it.”

BRAMMALL: Yeah, because the chances are they probably will, but you want to make it a good obstacle and you want to make it fun and a good, engaging journey as well.

DYER: You want to give them enough obstacles, but not so many that people are like, “Oh, come on! We know he's coming.” It was tricky, but we think we did a good job of that.

BRAMMALL: We're really excited for people to see it.

DYER: We tried to just make season 2 20 percent better in every direction.

PATRICK BRAMMALL: And it's still the ripple effect of that very first inciting incident. It's not that long after the first season in terms of story time, and so it's just still the effects of that moment. It's not like something new happens in season 2. It's not like Gordon hits a cat, although I know you would hate that.

Did you guys know you had a season 2 when you shot the finale for season 1?

DYER: No, no, no, no, no.

BRAMMALL: It just felt like a satisfying conclusion.

DYER: We've now written an end to season 1, which is like, “Oh, people will be so mad if there’s no season 3.” We've kind of given ourselves a job that we've written in. People will just cancel all their subscriptions if they’re not given season 3. But we didn't know during season 1. We thought it could have been one-and-done. We had no idea how people would respond, but people really liked it so we were quietly confident after it came out.

BRAMMALL: As we were shooting season 1, we had a lot of ideas and thoughts and kept a long list of notes on my phone about what we could potentially do in season 2. And so when we started plotting season 2, we were like, “Hey, let's look at those notes. Oh, that's fun. Let's get that character to do that.” I think we put together a good season. I'm excited for people to see it.

DYER: Yeah, me too. But we don't know what we'll do next if we have to go again.