Black Books: The Complete Third Series [DVD]

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Product Description ------------------- The foul tempered and wildly eccentric bookshop owner Bernard Black (Dylan Moran) is back for a third season. Black Books concerns the musings, doings and time-frittering techniques of raddled proprietor Bernard Black (Dylan Moran), his shy, multi-challenged assistant, Manny Bianco (Bill Bailey) and their under achieving friend, Fran Katzenjammer (Tamsin Greig). This dubious trio form a family of sorts to protect each other from the realities of modern London, but nothing can protect them from each other. DVD Features: Deleted Scenes Other Outtakes Photo gallery .com ---- The lovably misanthropic Britcom Black Books wrings its laughs out of characters as cynical and crabby as they come. The third series continues to follow the adventures, such as they are, of Bernard Black (Dylan Moran), a bilious bookstore owner who dislikes books and dislikes customers more. The deep-black comedy of the series is built on satire and sarcasm (Moran created the series and is also its chief writer), and no depth is too low to go. In "Manny Comes Home," Black Books' sole employee, the clueless aging hippie Manny, finally has had enough of Bernard's unappreciation, and takes a job at the swanky Goliath Books next door. The episode gets as many chuckles for Manny's fish-out-of-water experience (honestly, Black Books is the only place he can work, probably in all of the British Isles) as for Bernard's flailing and resentment without him. "Up he goes with that little wiggle of his," Bernard sneers as he spies on Manny shelving Gotham books on a ladder, "the wiggle of Judas!" Meanwhile, the gags of the deplorable conditions of both Bernard and the shop (mushrooms growing in Bernard's hair; mollusks on a drink glass) are good for that singularly pleasurable combination of cringing and belly-laughing. The extras include deleted scenes (the cat who plays Mr. Benson is a true rising star); a moody black-and-white short called "Bernard's Letter," in which Bernard composes a snarky response to a manuscript rejection; and loads of great deleted scenes, showing that the cast has as much fun on the set as the viewer does watching them. --A.T. Hurley