The Black Books

Black Books is a British television series created by Graham Linehan and Dylan Moran. It was broadcast on the Channel 4 network. A first pilot of the series was shot in 1998 at the Riverside studio of Channel 41. This first version was quite dark, and revolved around Bernard’s desire for suicide, then Manny’s. Originally, Manny (whose middle name is Zimmerman in reference to Bob Dylan) was an ‘anti-depression’ professional, and Fran (originally to be called Valerie) was a client, a philosophy lover. .This pilot was Dylan Moran’s first original creation as a television screenwriter. Graham Linehan, co-creator of Father Ted, will join the team to co-write the series at a request from producer William Burdett-Coutts, after seeing the pilot as well as a performance by Moran in Dublin. The characters are all original creations of Moran according to a process he calls spitballing, based on spontaneous creation1. The idea that Bernard would run a bookstore is due to Moran’s conception of the cursed enterprise. “Running a second-hand bookstore is already wanting commercial failure. It’s a whole philosophy. In all the books I’ve visited, I’ve been struck by the loneliness and confinement of the one who ran this lost vessel. Linehan says Manny’s personality came from a sign that read: “Please put the books back where you want, we have nothing else to do with our days but put them away. Moran said of his series that it started with “the will to do such complex idiocy for half an hour that it becomes coherent and believable.” ” Manny says in one episode that the bookstore is “not far from Russell Square” . The scenes outside the bookstore were shot outside of a real bookstore, a bit smaller that located on Leigh Street, in the Bloomsbury area.