• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 31, 2023

Another day, another show imported from overseas to fill TV’s content gap caused by the writers’ and actors’ strikes.

This time, it’s a comedy from Australia set to make its American debut on Paramount+ November 9.

This one is called “Colin From Accounts,” a slice-of-life comedy about a man and a woman who “are brought together by a nipple flash, a car accident and an injured dog,” said an announcement from Paramount+.

Indications are that the accident happened when the man -- Gordon, played by Aussie Patrick Brammall (pictured above right) -- was driving, became distracted by an attractive woman and hit a dog (probably the canine in the above photo).

The TV Blog is instantly reminded of the fender bender Jerry and Kramer got into when they were distracted in much the same way by braless Sue Ellen Mishkin on “Seinfeld.”

The woman in the photo above from “Colin From Accounts” is Ashley, played by Harriett Dyer. The two are the show’s central characters.

Interestingly, the “Colin” of the title -- if there is any -- is not mentioned or described in the Paramount+ press release. Thus, the meaning of the show’s title goes unexplained.

Whatever the title means, Paramount+’s press release calls the show “irresistible” and “endearing.”

Paramount+ is “beyond thrilled” to have the show, said a prepared statement from Jeff Grossman, executive vice president, content and business operations for Paramount streaming.

“Colin From Accounts” has already been available to Australian audiences since last December, when all eight of its first-season episodes dropped on Binge, an Australian streaming service.

The show is the second Australian-made show to be picked up for this fall by Paramount. The other is “NCIS: Sydney,” which is coming to CBS on November 13.

Produced in Australia, “NCIS: Sydney” joins the “NCIS” universe presumably in partnership with all the other stakeholders in this franchise whose several versions have been lucrative and successful for CBS since the first one premiered in 2003.

In this one, the NCIS team is a joint venture of American NCIS agents and Australian Federal Police (AFP) “grafted into a multinational taskforce to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet,” says CBS.

The series will premiere first in Australia on November 10, three days before its American debut.  

Prospecting for scripted shows down under in the face of a shortage of U.S. shows makes sense because the Australians speak English, sort of.

The same is true for the form of English spoken in the U.K., most of which is understandable to Americans when not rendered unintelligible by British accents.

“Ghosts U.K.” fits into this category. The show is the predecessor of the American sitcom “Ghosts,” which is adapted from the U.K. version.

Both are about a house full of ghosts from different eras in history who are coping with new owners.

In the absence of new episodes of the American “Ghosts” this fall, CBS has gone to the source to import “Ghosts U.K.” for prime time.

The English “Ghosts” premieres on CBS with two back-to-back episodes at 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Eastern, Thursday, November 16. Repeats of the American “Ghosts” will serve as a lead-in.

Despite these English-speaking imports from across the pond and across the globe, network TV is still depending on unscripted shows to get it through the content famine.

There is no end in sight to that either since the actors are still on strike. The writers’ strike ended on September 27.

The writers might now be busy writing shows in anticipation of the end of the actors’ walkout, but without the actors, there will still be no new shows until heaven knows when.