Dog Park: a delightful sitcom that will fill the Colin from Accounts shaped hole in your life

This snort-aloud Australian comedy is sweet, hilarious – and a surprising examination of male loneliness and mid-life crisis. Who’s a good show then?!

Whenever I’m watching a programme that features an animal and I realise I’m expected to have a specific reaction to that animal, I run into a problem. I call it the Cuteness Assumptive Theory: Subjectivity in Television issue (CATSIT for short). It boils down to this: if the success of your show relies on my finding your lead actor scrumptious-wumptious, you’ve already failed. We all like different things.

The theory applies equally to humans. We all know that moment when some interchangeable heartthrob walks into the scene on a US sitcom. All the characters lose their minds, this being apparently the hottest person on Earth, while you’re sitting thinking, ‘Huh?’ It happens with child stars too. Casting directors have a narrow spectrum of children they think will elicit an “awww” response from audiences. The response usually elicited in me is “Couldn’t they find a better actor?” I’m not trying to be liked here! Anyway, it’s the animal version that came to mind this week, watching Dog Park.

Dog Park (U, from Monday 24 August) centres on Roland, a misanthrope whose partner Emma has gone overseas for work. He’s been left in charge of their child, plus Beattie, a white poodle he never wanted. A neighbour, Sam, kidnaps Beattie to take her to the park to play with her friends. Roland’s wife has arranged this; she knows Roland will be a terrible dog-dad, only taking Beattie on joyless solo jogs if at all. Forced into the company of walkers, Roland comes to realise the importance of community and the joy of pooches. It sounds as trite as trifle, but hear me out.

This downbeat comedy set in Victoria, Australia, is a surprisingly mature examination of male loneliness and midlife crisis. Roland is a borderline alcoholic grammar pedant who is quite literally running from depression. Working as a careers counsellor at a college, he encourages his young wards to write their future gravestones, a hilariously uninspiring exercise. He’s not thriving. You know how in Studio Ghibli films, you get interstitial shots of grass rustling or beetles creeping? Dog Park’s scenes are cut with moments of Roland getting annoyed at people in the grocery store or losing his rag at an Alexa. All worryingly relatable.

His relationship might need one of those headstones. Roland and Emma are circling a breakup. They hurt each other and fumble to repair, while failing to hide this from their daughter. Rather than stock moments sketching such a breakdown, the show inhabits the barbed jokes, retyped texts, egg-shell conversations and frustrating phonecalls that feel painfully real. The show is sold as a comedy – and there are snort-aloud moments – yet more often I felt the prick of tears.

Being only at the start of the series, I don’t know if Roland and Emma make it. Perhaps theirs is a drawn-out game of fetch and return? However, I’m pretty sure his irascibility will be mellowed by the “dog park divas”, an eccentric band of gregarious day drinkers. Chief among these “dog tragics”, as Roland thinks of them, is Sam. Kind-eyed, gently provocative, she’s played by a radiant Celia Pacquola. If romance is in the air, it will surely come with a side order of pain and messiness. Or maybe Dog Park is playing a different game altogether.

Writer and co-creator Leon Ford gives a thorny, moving performance as Roland, who distrusts joy and shuns friendship. “How’s your more interesting significant other?” joshes a colleague. “Dead, actually. She died,” he shoots back. This saltiness feels highly Australian. It put me in mind of Patrick Brammall, who co-wrote Colin from Accounts: another Aussie comedy about a dog I worried I wouldn’t find cute, the name of which I hated to boot. That show became my most beloved of recent years.

And, actually, the dog is cute. Beattie has a sweet face, and ears that look like pigtails. I’m just delighted the show doesn’t rely on them. Unearned sentiment is what I struggle with, but Dog Park skips this hurdle, like an Australian kelpie at Crufts. Funny and frequently beautiful, it’s for dog people, but mostly it’s for people people. Who’s a good show? You’re a good show!