The real anti -Friends
With its Tom Waits style theme tune, Surrealist lunacy and cast of three who were like a late nineties, UK based version of Jules et Jim, Black Books remains one of my favourite TV shows of all time.
Written by Dylan Moran alongside Graham Linehan, it was cut from a different kind of sitcom tradition altogether: it fused together Moran’s perma- inebriated flights of fancy- a kind of pickled lyricism- with Linehan’s sure absurdist eye. Time has of course not been kind to Linehan, but I’m drawing a swift veil over that issue.
Drunken attempts at penning the perfect children’s book; becoming a seventies cop after too much caffeine, a disastrous hen party, accidentally drinking a rare expensive wine, a travel writer with a touch of the Palin, swallowing the ‘Little Book of Calm’ and turning messianic… No subject was too bizarre.
The trio complemented each other beautifully: there’s classic narcissistic bully Bernard Black (whose bookshop is the main backdrop for the shenanigans) portrayed with grouchy misanthropy by Moran himself; oddball outsider and accountant Manny Bianco (Bill Bailey) and venal maneater Fran Katzenjammer (Tamsin Greig) and they work so well together, you’d swear they were lifelong friends (with a small f) in real life.
It’s not just hilarious, looking back, it’s a wonderful satire on cafe culture in the UK. It’s prescient too: it seemed to anticipate the rise of high street homogenization. Dusty, chaotic bookshops are sadly something of a dying breed these days.
Stick on the Motorhead, and let’s all raise a glass to Bernard, Fran and Manny… Dance- off… Time for a dance -off…
Hit The North 
perma- inebriated flights of fancy… now *that* sounds fun
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