Blacks Books

Black Books -- One of the casualties of political correctness has been the character of the comical drunk. When I was a child, I recall several stand-up comedians who specialized in portraying humerous and slobbering drunks. But alcoholism is a disease, now, and, perhaps, a disability, and, therefore, the comical drunk was banished from the airwaves. (Seinfeld's Kramer seems to be a drunk without the booze.) But, apparently, this is true only on the American airwaves. In the U.K., at least, circa 2000 to 2004, in the sit-com Blacks Books, profound and debilitating alcoholism is the subject of many a merry jest. Dylan Moran plays the proprietor of a squalid used bookstore somewhere in Bloomsbury. Moran's character, Bernard Black, is a sullen, argumentative, and brilliant Irish alcoholic. He drinks continuously and vilifies his inoffensive customers for having the temerity to try to buy books from him -- in one episode, he actually pays his customers to take books off his hand so that he doesn't have to spend time chatting with them about the volumes they have selected. In an American show, built for semi-literate audiences, Bernard's continuous reading -- he always has a book in front of him -- would be a mark of intelligence, refinement, and culutre. In this show, produced, I think, for rather more sophisticated viewers, Black's reading just signifies that he is a smart, rude boor -- books don't make him a better person; instead, they are a crutch upon which to lean his anti-social personality. Black comes equipped with a zany friend, the optimistic and enterprising Manny, and a female sidekick, also alcoholic and sexually desperate, Franny, the proprietor of a neighboring shop, Nifty Gifty. The show, very funny and clever, operates generally on the Seinfeld moeel -- each character has an adventure arising from an obsession and the three plot strands are generally interwoven in an ingenious way. Black is drunk at all times, sometimes so drunk that he "goes to the toilet" in someone's wicker chair, mistaking it for commode. (His favorite dinner-party conversation involves a portrayal of "Belly Savalas" in which he sticks a popsicle in his navel and mimics the American cop.) Franny is hapless -- her dates turn out to be "arschholes" or gay. Manny gets into all sorts of wacky trouble. The show is fairly vulgar and the filth and chaos in the bookstore is convincingly portrayed, sometimes to an uncomfortable extent -- a jelly sandwich, for instance, is cemented to the ceiling and, in one episode, a starving Manny roasts three dead bees from the windowsill of the bookstore and eats them like popcorn. Trapped outside his bookstore in the pouring rain, Bernard goes into a nearby porno shop. The proprietor wants him to leave or buy something. Temporizing, Black asks the shopkeeper if he might not have something featuring "nurses." "Of course," the shopkeeper says. Black stalling for time says: "I don't like nurses who care for you. I mean something involving administrative nurses." Again, the shopkeeper says he has a video of that kind. "No, no, no," Black says. "I meant senior administrative nurses." And the shopkeeper, reaching under his counter, produces a video nasty entitled "Senior Administrative Nurses." "Sweet Jesus!" Black says, driven once more out into the storm. Someone is watching a reality show called "Pet Surprise" -- "you know, the one where the pet is taken out of his dog house, the dog house is completely remodeled with a new roof and bedding and a new drinking bowl and, then, the dog is brought back, wearing a blindfold, to be surprised by his new home." (The problem with reviewing comedy is that you tend to simply recycle gags that you liked.) This show is willing to try anything -- it has parodies, dirty jokes, complicated literary references; Fran's batlike squeaks as she masturbates are very funny and an episode in which Manny succumbs to the blandishments of a "beard fetishist" and becomes a "kept man" is hilarious. This is an excellent British sit-com, consistently funny and engaging.