A nipple flash and an injured dog are the catalysts for Colin From Accounts, one of the most quick-witted, joyful new series of the last year. Now that Americans are finally catching on, Paramount+ has officially announced today that it will be picking up Colin From Accounts season two. This Australian meet-cute story was created by its stars, actually married actors Harriet Dyer, who plays 29-year-old medical student Ashley, and Patrick Brammall, who portrays 40-something brewery owner Gordon. Their lives collide when Ashley cheekily flashes her tit at Gordon while he’s driving to work, causing him to hit a stray dog. They jointly decide to care for the injured critter. Agreeing that he must not have a cutesy dog name, they christen him Colin From Accounts. The chaotic chemistry between the two actors—plus Colin, now puttering along with the help of rear wheels—creates a vibe that is screwball and charming, with the show falling somewhere between Fleabag and Ted Lasso on the comedy flowchart.

The series was a hit in its native Australia and in the UK, where, Brammall says, no less than Love Actually maestro Richard Curtis declared it “one of the best rom-coms he’s seen in ages.” But it took nearly a full year for it to land in the US on Paramount+. Dyer and Brammall are shooting the new season in Australia right now—although, just to make things a little more confusing, the couple actually lives in Los Angeles with their toddler, Joni, when they’re not making Colin (hence the LA-centric name of Gordon’s Echo Park Brewery).

Dyer and Brammall spoke to me from Sydney on a Saturday morning Zoom call, discussing season two’s progress and what it’s like to create alternative versions of themselves. Since it was one of their rare days off, they had decided not to get a babysitter for Joni, which made for a Colin-style madcap scenario as they juggled the needs of a Vanity Fair interviewer and an adorable, energetic toddler rampaging through their residence.

Harriet Dyer: Our daughter’s in the freezer. I’m just gonna tell her to get out.

Patrick Brammall: She’s always in there looking for ice, because she loves Frozen.

Dyer: Is that a thing?

Brammall: Well, the main Frozen guy, he’s got lots of ice. That’s his whole job.

Vanity Fair: Colin has been a very word-of-mouth show in the US. So many of us are looking for feel-good shows that are also smart and real.

Dyer: There’s such a fine line between sweet and sickly. We have to put plenty of heart in the show for it to be a relationship comedy and for people to feel yummy. But there’s also a line for me personally, where I don’t want to kind of sell too much of our actual love. Like the other day, we had a scene in season two where I forgive him after this big fight, but it felt very real. It feels a bit icky to be shooting that and putting that on a TV show and packaging something that is quite personal. So we draw that line too.

These are fictional characters, but you worry about putting too much of yourselves into them?

Dyer: We’re capitalizing off of our chemistry, and also I’m like: Does chemistry run out in real life? I don’t know! We’re really putting it to the test, but we don’t want to abuse it.

Brammall: The whole thing started as a fun situation for two fictionalized versions of us. But as it’s evolved, there’s elements of people we know and stories we’ve heard and things from our own lives that we’ve pilfered like bowerbirds to make the world funny and real. The thing that is real, as Harri was saying, is this sense of banter. When people find out that we’re a real-life couple, they’re like, Ohhhh! They feel like they’re getting a behind-the-doors peek at us. And they’re not—but if people want to look into the show that way, we’re not going to stop them.

Dyer: We are pilfering our own charm with each other, and sometimes it feels a bit weird to package it and put it on television.

Actors do that anyway, right? So much of it is about chemistry. They’re just not usually married in real life.

Brammall: That’s right. You use what you have in the moment for real, knowing that it’s play. And it’s a really playful show, even when it dips into serious and more emotional stuff.

Dyer: It feels really fun to be able to play both sides of an argument that actually probably, in some form, has happened to us before—even if it’s not those words, it’s those feelings and rhythms. I feel like we’re good at fighting. Even if one of them is wrong, we each will make sure that they had their best chance in the argument. Like in episode seven, where they have that huge fight after her birthday—Ashley was really poorly behaved, but he was stressed and anxious and acted out. Both of them were a bit wrong. A few girlfriends of mine from high school were like, “Ugh, Harriet, I did not like Ashley.” That’s great! We really want people to be a bit mad with them from time to time.

Does writing arguments for your fictional characters help get them out of your system?

Dyer: It’s too hard to argue in real life—we’re too tired! We were shooting all this week, for instance, and we finished late, but she doesn't know that [points to Joni, who veers in and out of view]. She’s still up at the same time, so it’s a juggle right now. But we truly will look back at this time as a golden time.

American audiences are watching more international comedies these days, including Australian ones like Deadloch and Colin. It seems to be disproving the idea that comedy doesn’t travel.

Dyer: It traveled to us. We grew up watching British and American comedies. We’re used to digesting different continents’ versions of humor and not getting all the references. We also grew up watching every Christmas movie with snow, and we never questioned it. We’d just go jump in the pool when the credits rolled.

Brammall: The streaming industry has obviously changed things. It’s good to watch stuff with different rhythms.

Dyer: It’s probably a bad thing for the great American remake, though. People were asking if we would be open to remaking Colin in America. And we’re like: Why? We’re speaking English! [Joni interrupts, tugging at the toy microwave that her parents are using as a platform for their laptop.] Okay, here we go. Paddy decided to put my laptop on a toy microwave so that we would have chins. She never plays with it, but now she wants it, so please pretend that we have jawlines.

Did you think about weaving her into season two so that she could make herself useful on set?

Dyer: We tried, but we got in trouble from the lawyers because she’s not an Australian citizen yet. She would have been technically an undocumented worker. So for season two, we cast a kid who looks exactly like her.

Ashley and Gordon are living very single, child-free lives. Do you ever regret the outrageous things you write for your characters once you get on set? Like flashing your nipple in the first episode?

Dyer: I did also do a poo onscreen that actually made me feel really dirty. I was really mad with myself, sitting there pulling my pants down and doing some, you know, realistic performances in front of 20 lovely crew members.

Brammall: I did a dick pic onscreen, and so I had to lie in a bath with just a flesh-color G-string on and then fall out of the bath. I was really mad with myself that day. Didn’t you do something just the other day [for season two] that made you annoyed with yourself?

Dyer: Yeah, giving an old man a hand job. It’s not really a spoiler, but Ashley basically is trying to insert a catheter into a man’s elderly penis, and she’s trying to pull back the foreskin to do so. This is all prosthetics, but the prosthetic was so unbelievably realistic that I’m still not okay. So while she’s trying to pull back the foreskin, his wife enters and says he’s circumcised. So Ash was just giving him a hand job. I was so mad at myself for putting it in. It was a real story from my friend who’s a doctor, but yeah, it was pretty gnarly. That was a big moment I had this week of going, Why do I put myself through this?

Brammall: ’Cause it’s funny.

Dyer: My favorite thing is watching Paddy get absolutely humiliated.

Brammall: There’s a couple of moments in season two where I’m trying to do something and it’s not working and I get angry. We ended up shooting those all in the same week, and I was like, What is this season? Is it just me doing this all the time? But it is fun watching each other struggle. There’s an episode this season set mostly at night that I wrote, and I really put Harri through some pain. I’m going to enjoy watching that.

Just as long as she’s not on the toilet again.

Dyer: She’s on the toilet for one bit of it. We can’t help ourselves with the pee-pee poo-poo. It sounds terribly broad, the kind of show I wouldn’t necessarily want to make—but it’s so real. Everyone poos. And that dick-pic story was real as well. Paddy accidentally sent me one before we were together.

Brammall: It wasn’t good [cringes].

Dyer: I sent him a message saying, “What are you up to?” And rather coquettishly, he sent me a picture of his legs in the bath. But there was this floating pink fleshy dome in the corner of the thing that was by no means, like, [sexy]. And so I thought, That has to go in. Really no acting required.

Did you originally conceive of the show as a rom-com?

Dyer: It was just purely a writing exercise, that pilot—to see if I could write. But when we were creating a pitch document for it, we realized that there hasn’t been a single rom-com out of Australia—or so we believe. It’s very much an American, and then an English, genre.

Brammall: We weren’t thinking rom-com at the start. We were just thinking: good parts for us in something funny, something real. People have a really strong idea of what a rom-com is or should be, but fortunately, the people who feel that way have enjoyed the show. Richard Curtis, the master of rom-coms, said it’s one of the best rom-coms he’s seen in ages.

Dyer: Put us in a movie, Richard Curtis! We don’t want to have to keep writing for ourselves.

Haven’t you been besieged with offers?

Dyer: It’s my hope that when we get back [to the US], we are besieged. I’d like a siege.

Brammall: Love a siege. Just a light siege, maybe a bit of casual pillaging.

Dyer: It would be really cool for this to turn into some acting work where we can just sit and be dumdums in our trailers. But we’re really up for anything.

What can you tell me about Colin the dog and whether he’s going to return in season two?

Dyer: He’s back, baby! I think audiences wouldn’t forgive us. But how we get him back was a tricky one. It had to be realistic.

Brammall: We ended the season going, “Let’s go get our dog back.” So we pick up about two weeks later. It’s not as simple as just going back and saying: “Sorry, can we have the dog back?” And them going, “No worries!” They’ve got a little kid who now has the dog and they’ve got feelings about him.

Dyer: I’ll tell you what, he’s the most amazing dog. We never have to say, Let’s go again. He’s the most professional cast member, always so chilled. He has never messed up a take, not one. I want whatever he’s on because he is blissed out. His name is Zac, and I feel like maybe he puts the “zac” in Prozac? He’s really a special guy.

Brammall: In season two, we did have a cat on set a couple of days ago. Not the same. Do not work with cats.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.