Genre: Comedy
Actor: Bill Bailey, Dylan Moran, Tamsin Greig
How the Brits have mastered the art of making very funny shows about very grumpy people will never cease to amaze me. Belonging to that stacked category is Black Books, which follows a trio of shopkeepers as they go about their days in a semi-alcoholic haze. The situations themselves are mundane and involve everything from fixing the shops’ finances to going on dates, but it’s how they cope that makes the show hilarious. It’s more slapstick and surreal than anything, leaning heavily on the actors’ expert physical comedy and timing. The lead, Bernard (played by Dylan Morran who you might know as the book thief in Notting Hill), is a cynical drunk who abhors people, even and especially his own customers. But he’s tempered by his levelheaded accountant Manny (Bill Bailey) and the next-door shopkeeper Fran (Tamsin Greig). This isn’t the sort of sitcom that dives too deep into the psyches of its characters, but that doesn’t make them any less relatable or lovable. Though it first aired in 2000, Black Books doesn’t feel dated at all, thanks in large part to its surreal humor and its nihilistic characters, who share more than a few similarities with today’s quiet-quitting generation.
