'Please put the books anywhere you like because we've got nothing better to do than put them back
.' 'Bernard is retreating from modern life,' explains Linehan, 'whereas Manny engages in it.
The reason Bernard is funny is because he attempts to escape from modern life, and the reason Manny is funny is because in engaging he comes a cropper most of the time. To a degree, Bernard is a lot of Dylan and a little bit of me and Manny's a bit like me.'
The result is a promising new comedy
that owes a lot of its success to the charm of Moran. He wooed BBC2 audiences
with his little-boy-lost routine in the Simon Nye comedy drama How Do You Want
Me? , and this performance has elements of that character, albeit with a harder
edge.
The fondness for wine remains, although Bernard goes at it with considerably
more gusto and there are some fabulously well-executed drunk scenes. He is seedy
and rumpled and nasty at times, but it is the friendship of the well-rounded
and single Fran and the well-meaning and rounded Manny that allow us to love
him too.
The pair set out to write a comedy that was about what they refer to as the 'white noise' of modern society, citing examples as celebrity culture and music in pubs. They felt they didn't succeed in that, or in their attempts to craft something as slick as Seinfeld , but are happy with the results.
'We just wanted to cram as much elaborate stupidity into a half hour that could make it be coherent and that you would believe,' says Moran.
It was in production that tensions surfaced, as they stepped from equal writing roles to become star and director respectively.
'We fought like cat and cat,' says Moran flippantly.
'It was interesting,' says Linehan carefully. 'When I finished writing with Arthur, he didn't step in front of the camera and start acting. With Dylan it was tense because when you're directing you have to have an overview and it's hard to say to someone you've just been writing with, "Do this, don't do that" because it can be misinterpreted sometimes. And I can be wrong. It's fucking difficult.'
'I think it would have been the case even if you weren't directing,' says Moran. 'The practicality of it is that I'm doing a scene and I'm trying to remember the lines and see if the joke works and Graham might step in halfway through and say, "This doesn't seem to be working, let's try this other thing". And it was very strange to have to let go of the writing at that point.'
But by and large they would consider this an equal product?
'I think it was equal out of struggle,' muses Moran.
'I disagree,' says Linehan. 'I was always trying to bring your thing to life. I still think of it as more your thing than mine.'
What they do agree on is the similarities in their senses of humour.
'What we share is a love of detail,' says Moran.
'And understatement and language,' adds Linehan
. 'And characters revealing themselves without any exposition,' enthuses Moran.
To demonstrate this they produce
a book of New Yorker cartoons and proudly point to their favourite one. In it
a dead cat lies on a mortuary slab while a coroner cat has a conversation with
two cat policeman.
The caption: 'Curiosity'. If you appreciate that, you'll have no trouble finding
delight in Black Books.