Here's the odd couple of comedy
A new sitcom unites the talents of Dylan Moran and the co-creator of Father Ted.
Interview by Tina Ogle
Observer, Sunday September 17, 2000
There has to be a certain amount
of friction between great comedy partnerships: after all it is difficult to
imagine Morecambe never exchanging a cross word with Wise, or Galton and Simpson
merely giggling inanely as they created the great Harold Steptoe. But for Graham
Linehan and Dylan Moran, recently united to offer us the sitcom Black Books
, it appears to be Vinnie Jones who is the unlikely cause of dissent. Well,
not Vinnie exactly, but the line he utters in Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
:
'It's been emotional.'
According to stand-up comedian Moran, it's a terrible line. 'It's one of the worst lines I've ever heard.I mean, think about it. "It's been emotional" - how vague is that?'
'But that's the joke,' interrupts his writing partner. 'It's understatement.'
'No,' counters Moran, 'I think it's terrible. It's not understated enough and points towards something bigger without being specific about it.'
'I disagree,' says Linehan, shaking his head in bafflement. 'I'm surprised at that.'
Up to this point in the conversation they've been happily finishing each other's sentences and describing how and why they got together to create a six-part comedy about a grumpy second-hand bookshop owner and his two sidekicks. Apparently they hardly argued at all while writing it. Developed from an original script by Moran, which first aired at the Channel 4 Sitcom Festival in 1998, Black Books stars Moran as bad-tempered Bernard Black, with comedian Bill Bailey as his more optimistic assistant Manny and Tamsin Greig as neighbouring shopkeeper Fran.
Linehan - who co-wrote the work of genius that was Father Ted with Arthur Mathews, along with the sketch show Big Train and a less successful sitcom, Paris - came on board as co-writer at the suggestion of producer William Burdett-Coutts. Linehan was in the audience at the Riverside Studios in London when the comedy first aired and admits to a sense of tremendous excitement.
'When I saw it I thought it was very nearly brilliant but because of the madder elements and because of the structure it was really frustrating. It ended with about 16 students killing themselves, but I thought, "Fuck, this could be amazing".'
The pair had known each other for years from being on the comedy circuit. Linehan had first become aware of Moran when they both lived in Dublin. As a journalist on Dublin listings magazine Hot Press , he drank in the International Pub, while Moran performed at the comedy club upstairs.
'I saw him do a hilariously ramshackle performance once where he ate peanuts all through the gig. I had an idea of him as a flake but I started realising he was a fantastic comedian.'
Moran actually blushes when Linehan describes how in awe he was of him. At 29, he is three years Linehan's junior.
'I was incredibly intimidated by you, absolutely, seriously,' says Linehan.
'I find that very odd,' says Moran.
'You've got a kind of persona, you have the air of someone that you'd better make sure you have something good to say when you talk to you.'
'That makes me sound like my old French teacher,' mutters Moran.
'Now that I know you, I know that's not true,' adds Linehan.
'No, I'll put up with any old shit,' says Moran.
The pair had ironed out any awkwardness before they agreed to collaborate, and Moran was aware of how much he had to learn about sitcom structure.
'It was a great education for me on writing for television. Graham had served his apprenticeship and I hadn't. Sitcom is as tight a form as writing a ballad.'
'Or a haiku,' puts in Linehan. 'It must end as it began. Everything has to be in stasis, it's a constant loop. But that's quite liberating as well because when you're writing a story the structure is half there because you know all we have to do is get them back to the original place.'
The characters were Moran's original inventions but were developed through a process he refers to as 'spitballing'.
'Well that's what they call it in the William Goldman book [ Adventures in the Screen Trade ],' he says. 'It's talking shit basically, but in character.'
The pair did this for a month, until
Bernard, Manny and Fran had taken on lives of their own.
'It's a cliché but it's true,' says Linehan. 'The characters have to start talking
to each other without you, and you're honestly transcribing what they're saying.'
The setting came about because of Moran's fascination with what he perceives as doomed enterprise.
'Running a second-hand bookshop is a guaranteed commercial failure. It's a whole philosophy. There were bookshops that I frequented and I was always struck by the loneliness and dogged ness of these men who piloted this death ship.'
