Is Black Books worth watching?

Cafe Society
1

This is a Britcom about an Irish guy who owns a London bookshop. He drinks, he smokes, and he sits around reading all day. In fact, he seems to regard the bookshop as his own private collection and resents the customers who come in expecting to be able to trade money for books.

It stars an Irish comedian-actor-writer guy whom I understand is very popular over there but who is unknown to me (yes, I know he was in Shaun of the Dead). I’m kind of fascinated with the drinking-and-smoking-to-scientifically-impossible-degrees thing a la Ab Fab, but is there any more to it? Is it funny? Does it hold your interest? Is it worth checking out? (Netflix seems to think I’ll enjoy it.)

2

It’s kind of absurdist humor, but I enjoyed it.

3

I tried to watch it. It has some promise and I like the humor style. However, I think The Snuff Box (available on Netflix) is much better and has the same general style (plenty of smoking and drinking in that one too).

4

It’s made our way through the whole family, and we all loved it. I’d say definitely absurdist, often slapstick as well, but it’s often laugh-out-loud funny.

Just to give you a bead on our humor, we love Monty Python and Little Britain too.

5

I liked Black books a lot. The first episode is very good. If you don’t like the first episode you probably won’t like any of the others.

6

Yes, it’s very good, especially the first series which was co-written by one of the creators of Father Ted. It has Dylan Moran and QI regular Bill Bailey in it, which is a recommendation in itself.

7

It’s a good show. A touch of absurdism, a touch of misanthropic venom. Not as good as, say, The IT Crowd, but good.

8

Absolutely top-tier comedy. One of the best British comedies of the last few decades. Definitely in my top 5.

9

What is Little Britain about? Is that the one with all the sex and swearing? Maybe that’s Coupling.

I love MPFC.

10

Little Britain is a sketch show with essentially two people, Matt Lucas and David Walliams, playing a variety of recurring characters.

11

The closest comparison I would make would be Fawlty Towers. You’ve got a character who doesn’t like people but is forced to deal with them on a constant basis because he runs a business.

12

I saw one episode (a guy was trying to write a children’s book and a woman went for a girl’s getaway with her friends) and it didn’t knock my socks off.

13

I loved the first two series. Found the third okay. Didn’t like the direction the fourth took.

14

I loved it. I hate the laugh track though- or I did at first. I became immune to British television laugh track at some point.

15

I did not particularly like it. I didn’t hate it but did not find it funny.

16

I’ve watched several episodes but only endured them thanks to Tamsin Greig. The other two characters are worthless.

Tamsin has been in some really crappy britcoms (e.g., Friday Night Dinner) but finally is in something worth watching, Episodes on Showtime.

17

Matt Leblanc as Matt LeBlanc? I am skeptical.

18

Black Books is awesome. Opinions differ, of course, but it’ll take all of 25 minutes to sit through an episode and decide for yourself whether or not you think it’s funny and if those minutes were wasted or worth it.

19

I found Black Books to be hilarious. Check out the episode where Manny’s a natural-born piano player.

You might also enjoy Green Wing.

20

I have to chime in (although haven’t seen the show in the OP) but *Episodes * is one of the best comedies I’ve seen in a long time and Matt Leblanc is actually funny (who knew?) I am not a Friends fan, so I feel I have a true objective opinion :).