List of Black Books characters
Bernard Black is a grumpy, drunken, cynical, pessimistic, and at times depressive Irish misanthrope, whose sole pursuits in life appear to be drinking, smoking, reading, and insulting people.
Bernard's role as the owner of the bookshop 'Black Books' is an interesting vocational choice when one takes into account the fact that he hates both the pressures and responsibilities involved in retail, as well as his customers, with extreme passion.
Despite his disdain of the process of retail, he displays an appreciation for the medium in which he deals – when asked at one point if the binding on a set of the collected works of Charles Dickens is real leather, he counters with "They're real Dickens"[2] – and on numerous occasions displays a fondness for the shop itself, demonstrating a defensive reaction to Manny's suggestions for improvement on his first day at work ("It is a lovely place!
")[1] and refusing to leave it for anything further than two minutes' walking distance away,[3]'Party', Black Books episode six, series three, although this could in fact be related to his apparent distaste for anything but the most limited of human contact.
Despite his apparent fondness for the shop, he doesn't appear to have much faith in it – such as an instance in one episode, when a customer asked for a certain book, Bernard replied, "How should I know?
The unfortunate man was forced to his knees and coldly informed, "from where you are now to that corner is our music section", before being savagely kicked and ordered to search.
[3] Due to his poor hygiene, the bookshop is also often afflicted with bizarre examples of uncleanliness, including its colonisation by an unseen species of furry, beaked vermin apparently unknown to modern science,[5] and a banana-eating creature under his bed that they just call The Thing.
For all his misanthropic qualities and anger, Bernard does possess redeeming and sympathetic characteristics; he is clearly mature and well-read, if ill-disposed to use his intelligence to any great degree.
At one point he even wrote what appeared to be a very complex, intense and lengthy novel, involving such themes as love, betrayal and the Stalinist purges at over one thousand pages long in a very short period of time; however, as the idea was to write a children's novel targeted at three- to six-year-olds, he is persuaded to scrap the initial draft by Manny.
The only two characters with whom Bernard could be said to possess a friendship are Manny Bianco, his shop assistant and flatmate, and Fran Katzenjammer, his best and oldest friend.
The two appear to have a platonic friendship, with little overt indication of romantic interest to each other; however, it is suggested that they did once have a sexual encounter, which Fran forced Bernard to forget.
[3] When questioned by Manny in Series 1 Episode 2, Bernard reveals that he thought he was gay 'for a bit', but that he was discouraged by 'the prohibitive standards of hygiene.
Unlike his boss – a surly misanthrope with little interest in selling books – Manny is an extremely helpful and skilful salesman, who is well liked by customers.
In contrast to his demeanour later in the series, Manny is highly stressed; evidently as a result of his being an accountant, as he tells Bernard "I hate my job!"
Because Manny is the only person in the shop who demonstrates any sort of desire to keep the place tidy, Bernard treats him as little more than an indentured servant, to be kept hostage, ordered around, and forced to do petty tasks with little reward.
His relationship with Fran Katzenjammer, Bernard's best friend, is much better since it is based on mutual appreciation and numerous shared interests (including celebrity gossip.
In the first series, Bernard's increasingly dictatorial manner forced Manny to leave home, only to sheepishly return following a brief period working as a model for a photographer with a beard fetish.
On numerous occasions throughout the series, Manny has demonstrated that he is talented and well liked, and that he could have done more with his life were it not for the ignorance and apathy of those around him, and his own lack of confidence and his eager-to-help tendencies.
[14] Manny is artistically talented, capable of drawing an incredibly detailed, coloured illustration of children building a sandcastle on a beach in only a few seconds with one pencil.
[19] She is man-hungry, and constantly on the look-out for a relationship; the few she does attempt, however, have been little short of disastrous for all concerned, and her personal ad reads "30 something woman seeks solvent man for sex and possible friendship, sense of humour irrelevant".
