‘Colin From Accounts’ Stars on How That Messy Finale Wedding Proposal May or May Not Be Catastrophic
As Paramount+’s “Colin From Accounts” winds down its Season 2 with the finale episode “Speedy Susans,” Gordon (Patrick Brammall) and Ashley (Harriet Dyer) are actually in a pretty good place. Figuratively, not literally: They’re technically at the wedding of Ashley’s best friend Megan (Emma Harvie) and her fiancé Rumi (Virginia Gay), who is most certainly not a fan of Gordon.
But that’s fine, Ashley is the one in pain, after her wisdom teeth are removed. Ashley nonetheless tries to fulfill her job as Maid of Honor by masking her swollen face with an ill-advised spray tan. It’s an uncomfortable day for both, but things get better at the reception. In a moment of tenderness, both Gordon and Ashley say “I love you” for the first time to one another. And it seems like Season 2 is going to end on an upbeat note for them.
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But hold on. Gordon, who’s perhaps been overserved, gets caught up in the moment and proposes to Ashley. On the dance floor. In front of everyone. It’s a super cringe moment when she’s not ready to say yes, and she’s definitely not about to accept a clumsy wedding offer during her best friend’s nuptials. It’s an awkward record scratch, and a torpedo in everything that the couple has worked toward in two seasons. Gordon tries to play it off as a joke. But can they recover from this terrible moment?
Married co-creators Brammall and Dyer, who not only star in the series but also wrote every episode (Dyer is credited with the finale), tell Variety that they purposely ended the season right there – leaving viewers wondering whether this was something they could get over and laugh about, or if this was too catastrophic to survive.
“We liked that it could be either,” Dyer says of what might happen next. “We liked that it could be something they get through and just another like, ‘that was messy.’ Or maybe it’s seismic. Maybe they don’t get over it, and then there’s an opportunity to find each other again.”
Proposing at someone else’s wedding is a pretty big social faux pas. But as Dyer notes, it was an emotional moment for Gordon. He had just been talking to Ashley’s ex-boyfriend, who was lamenting losing her – and at that moment, Gordon realized he didn’t want to make that same mistake. It’s been an emotional time for Gordon, whose father had just passed away in an earlier episode, and he was feeling vulnerable.
“It came from such a beautiful place, and if you’re Gordon, and you’ve had a few drinks, and her ex says that’s the one that got away, and that isn’t it lucky that she met your dad before he died… I think he just got carried away,” Dyer says.
Turns out it could have been much worse. Brammall reveals that in an earlier cut of the episode, the story ended on an even darker note.
“We just did a tableau of the two of them, and you had people sort of slowly dancing in front of them,” he says. “They got lost in the crowd. And it just looked a lot more like bleak, like, ‘they’re not going to make it. This is a couple who are really in trouble.’ And it was a bit too bleak, actually.”
In the edit bay, the producers and editors managed to find some lighter moments and add in a bit of uplift. Plus, they had initially pulled out the scene where Gordon and Ashley said, “I love you,” and that was also, thankfully, added back in.
“Our CBS studio executive, thank God, said, ‘there’s something missing between Gordon and Ashley.’ We said, ‘you’re literally right, there’s a whole scene missing. Should we put it back in?’” Dyer recalls. “We were so stressed, we didn’t know what we’re doing.”
Also, Dyer says another executive note, this one from Australian outlet Foxtel, suggested that the show add a “real wedding banger after that moment to lift things up.” Foxtel was even willing to pay for the song. “And that’s when we went straight to ABBA,” she says. “Because for Australians, ABBA and weddings are synonymous.”
The song they chose? ABBA’s “Waterloo.” Which was perfect: A high-energy party song, but that title could also refer to the “Waterloo” that Gordon and Ashley now find themselves in.
“Exactly,” Dyer says. “That’s why we loved that one too, because it felt a lot. It felt like it was an analogy.”
Meanwhile, the unresolved finale also serves another purpose: Brammall and Dyer hope it will create a groundswell of demand for a Season 3.
“We wrote that ending partly because it amused us and partly to force their hand out,” Brammall says. “We think it’s working. We haven’t got the word, but we’re pretty confident. We’re going to start plotting it imminently.”
The reviews for Season 2 of “Colin From Accounts” have matched – and in many ways, surpassed – the solid reaction the show got in its first year. So far, Season 2 has a 100% “Certified Fresh” ranking via 20 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes; Season 1 also has a 100% score from 29 reviews.
“Colin From Accounts” debuted in Australia in December 2022 and became a hit there, and then an even bigger smash in the UK, where it airs on BBC Two. (The show finally made it to the U.S. via Paramount+ last November.) As originally conceived, Brammall and Dyer play strangers who meet when they cause an accident that injuries a cute border terrier. The dog lives — but now he has special needs. The duo don’t have a lot in common (there’s a 12-year age gap between them), and yet they both share guilt over what happened to the pooch. From there, they slowly bond through a reluctant shared custody of the dog (whom they cheekily name “Colin From Accounts”).
“We said that if Season 1 was ‘will they or won’t they,’ Season 2 was, ‘should they have?’” Dyer says. “It’s much more exploration about each other and each other’s pasts. I think the spotlight’s a little bit more on Gordon this time. Who is he? Because we got to meet Ashley’s family in Season 1.”
Adds Brammall: “Why is this guy in his 40s still single? There’s a lot more baggage in his cupboard than she has. I think also, in Season 1, we had the very well understood structure of a romantic comedy. Season 2 was like, we don’t have that clock on it. That liberates us, in a way, to have some fun with them. The season is about her accepting him or not.”
Now that “Colin From Accounts” has become a global hit, it also allowed Brammall and Dyer to have some fun with at least one cameo – and again, that’s literal. Kevin Bacon shows up in an episode, via the Cameo app, in which he’s hired by the parents of Brett (Michael Logo) to break the news that they’re kicking him out of their house.
Brammall worked with Bacon’s wife Kyra Sedgwick on the sitcom “Call Your Mother,” and the two couples have remained friends.
“When we had the idea for Brett’s parents to use Cameo and kick him out of the house, we thought, let’s go for gold. Who’s the most famous person we know?” Brammall says. “He said yes, straight away. ‘You mean I have a chance to be in a 100% Rotten Tomatoes certified fresh show?’”
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