What: Like most avid readers, I've toyed with the idea of owning a bookstore. Like Bernard Black, the bookstore owner played by Dylan Moran, I see that the downside to this is, clearly, dealing with the annoying people who interrupt your reading because they want to buy some books. Bernard deals with this by being an openly hostile malcontent who drinks and smokes while loudly and elaborately insulting people. It's very funny. Black Books also features Bill Bailey as Bernard's hapless but sweet assistant and Tamsin Grieg as their hapless and usually bored friend Fran.
Comparable to: Other misanthropic British comedies, plus the surrealistic-adventure-time plots of Spaced.
Representative quote:
Customer: Look, there's no other way to say this, but I didn't come in here to be insulted.
Bernard: Well, I didn't ask for the job of insulting you. In another life, we could have been brothers. Running a small, quirky taverna in Sicily. Maybe we would have married the local twins instead of wasting each other's time here in this dump. But it was not to be. So hop it.
You might not like it if: You have no pent-up aggression that can be released through the cathartic exercise of watching Bernard insult people.
How to get it: You can get the complete set, which includes all three seasons, or you can occasionally switch it up with something where people are nice to each other and don't drink much.
Connection to previous Wreckage: I said Rec. #31: Don't Point That Thing at Me was like someone let Dylan Moran loose in a P.G. Wodehouse novel. Now you have a visual for that.
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