Black Books - The Complete First and Second Series (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)I finally purchased these as a Christmas gift for myself. If you are a fan of the "underground"-type shows or even the greats like Monty Python, you are likely to love these. The discs have spent more time in my DVD player than their cases. Very satisfying to watch again and again. If you've seen Dylan Moran's comedy act, hang on because this is where he goes well over the top. The humor is outlandish and sometimes a bit cruel, but absolutely brilliant! One of my favorite casts!

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Black Books: The Complete 3rd Series (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)This third series is as good the first two series if not better.
The opening episode is one of the best of all. A competitor bookshop 'Goliath Books' has opened next door and Manny (Bill Bailey) is now working there. He left 'Black Books' after his hand was burnt by Bernard. Simon Pegg plays the Manager of Goliath books and really adds another dimension to the show. Shame he couldn't have done more. This episode is absolutely brilliant and I must have watched 8 or 9 time now.
The episode 'Moo-Ma and Moo-Pa' contains perhaps the most surreal moment of the entire series when Bernard and Fran go a under a dinner table in a restaurant to pick up a piece of cutlery and there is a whole bar under the table! In case you hadn't worked it out Moo-Ma and Moo-Pa are Manny's parents who come down to visit, much to Bernards disgust.
Sadly there is no commentary on the series 3 disc. The commentaries on series 1 & 2 were almost as good as the shows themselves. However the out-takes and deleted scenes are good, and as whole the DVD easily merits 5 stars.


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The foul tempered and wildly eccentric bookshop owner Bernard Black (Dylan Moran) is back for a third season. Black Books concerns the musings, doings and time-frittering techniques of raddled proprietor Bernard Black (Dylan Moran), his shy, multi-challenged assistant, Manny Bianco (Bill Bailey) and their under achieving friend, Fran Katzenjammer (Tamsin Greig). This dubious trio form a family of sorts to protect each other from the realities of modern London, but nothing can protect them from each other.DVD Features:Deleted ScenesOtherOuttakesPhoto gallery

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Black Books - The Complete Second Series (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)Dylan Moran is brilliant. The perfect antidote to those oh, so perfect american sitcoms filled with bright and shiny people. You know, the ones with impossibly white teeth who never look rumpled or stinky or real. Moving walls, thongs, and summertime girlfriends...this one's got it all. You will need your pause button as you'll laugh right through the next jokes!

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The foul tempered and wildly eccentric bookshop owner Bernard Black (Dylan Moran) is back for a second season. Bernard's devotion to the twin pleasures of drunkenness and willful antagonism deepens and enriches both his life and that of Manny (Bill Bailey), his assistant. Bearded, gentle, sweet and good, Manny is everything that Bernard isn't and is punished by Bernard relentlessly just for the crime of existing. They depend on each other for meaning as Fran (Tamsin Greig), their oldest friend, depends on them for distraction.DVD Features:Audio CommentaryOtherOuttakesPhoto gallery

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The Complete Black Books (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)Oddly enough, Comedy is the hardest thing for people to agree on.
Now, I have to say, I am open to enjoying many forms of comedy, but Black Books consistently has me going into seizures of laughter. I don't know why, but the unique and particular TIMING in their shows is the key to my personal HUMOR button. Mind you, I love FAWLTY TOWERS, and I LOVE Eddie IZZARD stand up, but Black Books never fails to throw me into hysterical fits of laughter when the afore-mentioned items have even grown cold.
Black Books touches a sarcasm bone I didn't know existed. Normally I enjoy the standard issue sarcasm and high-brow humor, but Black Books takes all that one step further and even adds a little Simon Pegg and his stark, straight-man-humor--as was so aptly illustrated in Shaun of the Dead-- and integrates that to Black books as well.
Black Books has a little of "everything" in it, as long as the everything is BRITISH humor. And I have to say it tickles my funny bone every single time I watch it. I can't say enough GOOD about BLACK BOOKS. But like all comedy, you have to see it yourself to determine if it is funny to you personally. So try an episode, give it a shot. And make your own determination. Honestly, it's the best $45 I ever spent.

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Black Books centers around the foul tempered and wildly eccentric bookshop owner Bernard Black (Dylan Moran). Bernard's devotion to the twin pleasures of drunkenness and willful antagonism deepens and enriches both his life and that of Manny (Bill Bailey), his assistant. Bearded, gentle, sweet and good, Manny is everything that Bernard isn't and is punished by Bernard relentlessly just for the crime of existing. They depend on each other for meaning as Fran (Tamsin Greig), their oldest friend, depends on them for distraction. Black Books is a haven of books, wine and conversation, the only threat to the group's peace and prosperity is their own limitless stupidity.DVD Features:Audio CommentaryDeleted ScenesOtherOuttakesPhoto gallery

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Black Books - The Complete First Series (2001) Review

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(More customer reviews)Black Books is a charming, absurdist situation comedy series set in a bookshop. "Charming," you ask? "The main character is a nasty, morose, chain-smoking drunk with a neurotic for a best friend and a bearded simpleton for an employee." Ah, but what's what makes it such a gem of writing and acting.
Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey met during the Edinburgh Fringe and were the top two contenders for the Perrier Prize. Moran came out on top, but remembered Bailey a few years later when he was offered his own show. Moran's character of an ill-tempered grouch is matched perfectly by Bailey's good-hearted goof, and their chemistry as Bernard and Manny is what makes Black Books such enjoyable viewing. Tamsin Grieg is a good comic actress, but I found Fran Katzenjammer to be a little grating at times. Her character does develop more in subsequent seasons, so don't discount her performance.
Fans of Father Ted, Spaced, BlackAdder, and Little Britain should adore this show, and if I have to explain that any further then you should go back to watching "According To Jim".
It's rare to find comedies that are as intelligent as funny, and Black Books is a prime example of such shows. Of course it'd never take off in America, but I thought the same thing about The Office. Please, please, please do not remake this as an American sit-com.
For reasons unknown, Comedy Central used to run this early Sunday mornings back in 2001 before dropping it from the roster. I had only caught two episodes before and was distraught at its departure. Cue to last year and its Region 1 release and my frabjous rapture.
Bring on season Two (and Three...)


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Black Books is a second-hand bookshop in London run by an Irishman named Bernard Black. He is probably the planet's worst-suited person to run such an establishment: he makes no effort to sell, closes at strange hours on a whim, is in a perpetual alcoholic stupor, abhors his customers (sometimes physically abusing them) and is often comatose at his desk. Help comes in the lumpy shape of Manny Bianco, a hairy, bumbling individual who (almost by osmosis) becomes Bernard's assistant. Manny is not exactly great at the job either but he is a million times better than Bernard. Next door is Fran, an anxious, frustrated woman who runs a sort of new-age shop selling the most unlikely bits of arty junk. Fran is friends with Bernard and, through him, with Manny; together the trio become embroiled in escapades that are sometimes extreme or violent or fantastically ludicrous, and always bizarre.

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