The Wait for More Colin Is Getting Uncomfortable

There's a particular kind of British comedy that sneaks up on you. It doesn't announce itself with loud punchlines or catchphrase energy. It arrives quietly, through characters who feel like people you might actually know—flawed, awkward, and trying their best. Colin from Accounts, the BBC sitcom created by and starring Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, sits squarely in this tradition. Two seasons in, it has built something rare: a romantic comedy where the romance is messy and the comedy hurts a little.
So naturally, people want to know when season three is coming.
Where Things Stand
As of mid-2025, the BBC has not officially commissioned a third season. This isn't unusual for British television, where shows often pause between shorter runs. But the silence feels louder than it should, partly because season two ended with deliberate ambiguity. Ashley and Gordon, the central couple whose relationship formed the spine of the series, were left in a moment of genuine uncertainty—not the manufactured kind that cheap dramas use to force another series, but the real, uncomfortable kind that comes from two people realizing they may want different things.
Brammall and Dyer have been cautious in interviews. They've spoken about wanting to protect the show from overstaying its welcome, a refreshing position in an era where successful series tend to expand until they collapse under their own weight. They have also, notably, refused to close the door entirely. The story, they suggest, isn't finished. Just resting.
What Made the First Two Seasons Work
The show's success is easy to mischaracterize. On the surface, it's another will-they-won't-they workplace romance with a dog as the meet-cute device. Colin himself—the injured dog that brings Ashley and Gordon together—functions as both literal pet and emotional mirror, reflecting back what the characters struggle to say to each other.
But the writing refuses easy sentiment. Gordon runs a failing brewery with the kind of stubborn pride that masks real fear. Ashley arrives with visible competence and hidden damage. Their attraction is immediate and inconvenient. The people around them—Gordon's chaotic staff, Ashley's wary mother, the various ex-partners who drift through—are drawn with enough specificity that they never feel like plot devices.
The comedy operates on recognition rather than surprise. You laugh because you've been in that meeting, had that argument, made that exact face when someone said something unbearable.
Why the Delay Matters Less Than It Seems
Television production schedules have become difficult to predict. Funding structures shift, talent commitments conflict, and streaming rights complicate what used to be straightforward decisions. The BBC in particular has faced pressure to reduce commissioned hours while maintaining perceived quality.
More interesting is the creative question. Colin from Accounts has covered significant ground in sixteen episodes. Ashley and Gordon moved from strangers to colleagues to lovers to something more complicated. The show explored grief, family obligation, professional failure, and the difficulty of trusting someone when your history suggests you shouldn't. A third season needs a reason to exist beyond momentum.
Good television often comes from constraint. The British model of shorter series with intentional gaps can produce work that lasts precisely because it isn't constantly producing. Compare the compressed intensity of Fleabag's two seasons with the gradual exhaustion that afflicts many American comedies stretched across eight or ten years.
What a Third Season Might Address
If it happens, the next chapter faces interesting structural challenges. The central tension of the first two seasons—will these two people figure out how to be together—has largely been resolved, or at least complicated beyond simple resolution. What remains is the harder question: how do you build a life with someone when you're not sure what kind of life you want?
The show has also established a strong ensemble that could sustain more focus. Gordon's business partner Lee, played with nervous energy by Emma Harvie, and the brewery staff have earned more screen time. Ashley's mother, whose presence in season two deepened the show's emotional range, suggests family dynamics that haven't been fully explored.
There is also, inevitably, Colin himself. The dog ages. Injuries heal or don't. The metaphor becomes literal in ways that might matter.
The Broader Context
Australian comedy has found unusual international traction in recent years, from The Letdown to Utopia to Colin from Accounts itself. Brammall and Dyer's position as creators who perform, write, and produce their own material places them in a specific tradition of authorial control that tends to produce more deliberate pacing. They are not waiting for network notes. They are deciding what they have left to say.
This makes the uncertainty around season three feel less like industry dysfunction and more like appropriate creative caution. The audience's desire for more is not automatically a reason to provide it. The best seasons of television often arrive after periods of genuine uncertainty about whether they should happen at all.
For now, the show exists as a complete, if temporarily finished, thing. Two seasons of careful observation about how difficult it is to let someone know you. The possibility of more remains exactly that: a possibility, neither promised nor denied, which somehow suits the material perfectly.