Synopsis
Black Books centres around the foul tempered and wildly eccentric bookshop owner Bernard Black. Bernard’s devotion to the twin pleasures of drunkenness and wilful antagonism deepens and enriches both his life and that of Manny, his assistant. Bearded, 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…
Trivia about Black Books
The fictional address for the bookshop is Black Books, 13 Little Bevan Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1.
The exterior scenes of the bookshop were filmed outside a real bookshop, albeit a smaller one, called Collinge & Clark, located at 13 Leigh Street, Bloomsbury.
It featured Manny (surname Zimmerman in reference to Bob Dylan) and the Fran character as Valerie, a philosophy lecturer.
The pilot was an original creation of Moran's and the series was his first creation as a writer for a television series.
Linehan, co-writer of the earlier Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted, joined at the outset to co-write the series with Moran at the suggestion of producer William Burdett-Coutts after Linehan saw the pilot and had seen Moran performing in Dublin.
The characters were Moran's original creation, created over a month-long process he calls "spitballing", which is talking spontaneously to each other in character.
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