Bernard Black

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Bernard Ludwig Black

First appearance	"Cooking the Books"
Last appearance	"Party"
Information
Gender	Male
Age	Mid 30s
Occupation	Proprietor of Black Books
Relationships	Fran Katzenjammer, Manny Bianco (friends)
Relatives	Ma (mother)
Portrayed by	Dylan Moran
Created by	Dylan Moran

Bernard Ludwig Black is a fictional bookseller and the main character in the sitcom Black Books. He is played by Dylan Moran. The owner of the titular bookshop, many of the episodes of the series focus on Black and his personality quirks and issues.

[edit] Character

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Bernard is a drunken, sour, bitter and cynical Irishman whose sole interests and pursuits in life appear to be drinking, smoking, reading and insulting people. A surly and misanthropic man, he is the owner of the bookshop 'Black Books', which is an interesting vocational choice when taking into account the fact that he hates both the pressures and responsibilities involved in retail and his customers with passion. To him, people buying books is a very bad thing, as it means he will have to take the time to order more from "the place from which you order books for when you want to sell them in your bookshop", a process capable of reducing him to genuine despair^[1], and he is willing to pay people to take the second hand books they bring to sell him away from the shop so that he doesn't have to catalogue and sell them again^[2]. Despite his loathing of the process of retail, he displays an appreciation for the medium in which he deals - when asked at one point if the binding on a book is real leather, he counters with "It's real Dickens"^[3] - and on numerous occasions displays a fondness for the shop itself, demonstrating a defensive reaction to Manny's suggestions for improvement on his first day ("It is a lovely place!")^[4] and refusing to leave it for anything further than two minutes walking distance away^[5], although this could rather be related to his apparent despise for anything but the most limited human contact.

This combination of misanthropy and reclusiveness have combined to leave Bernard with questionable abilities of social interaction and personal hygiene. He is frequently found in the same black suit (later revealed to actually be an extremely dirty white suit^[6]) and his idea of a stylish haircut is to get someone to slice off clumps of his wildly disordered, overgrown hair with a bread-knife^[7]. Due to his questionable personal hygiene, the bookshop is also often afflicted with bizarre examples of uncleanliness.

The only two characters with whom Bernard could be said to possess a friendship are Manny Bianco, his shop assistant and flatmate, and Fran Katzenjammer, his best and oldest friend. He has a particularly complex relationship with Manny, frequently belittling and bullying the other man whilst at the same time displaying a curiously possessive and jealous attitude towards him. It is shown that Bernard attempts to isolate Manny from his other friends by screening his phone messages ^[8], once destroyed a letter informing Manny that he had been accepted into the Open University, and the one occasion that Manny mentions a girl whom he has a crush on is met by Bernard with seething jealousy^[9]. Despite treating the other man as little more than a downtrodden slave to be bullied and tormented at will, it is also shown that Bernard is practically incapable of functioning without Manny's presence in the shop; on one occasion that Manny both quits his job at the shop (to work at the bookshop next door) and is kicked out of the flat, the state of the shop is reduced to a disordered mess containing both mouldy books and dead badgers and Bernard - who is reduced to obsessively spying on Manny as he works in the building next door - deteriorates severely in his physical health, apparently clueless as to how to look after himself to the extent where he squirts oven cleaner down his throat in an attempt to feel better^[10].

His relationship with Fran is much stronger; the two share a very good relationship, largely based on a shared fondness for wine and smoking. The two appear to have a platonic friendship, with little overt indication of romantic interest to each other; however, it is suggested that they did once have a sexual encounter, that Fran forced Bernard to forget^[11]. Unlike most, Fran is also capable of cowing and dominating Bernard.

For all his misanthropic qualities and bitterness, Bernard does possess redeeming and sympathetic characteristics. He is clearly incredibly intelligent and well read, if ill-disposed to use his intelligence to any great degree. He is frequently very witty and satirical, and shows a good psychological understanding of those around him. He is even capable of writing what appears to be a very complex, interesting and lengthy novel, involving such themes as love, betrayal and the Stalinist purges at over one thousand pages long in a very short space of time; however, as the idea was to write a children's novel targeted at three-to-six year olds, he is persuaded to scrap the initial draft by Manny^[12].

Romance is also shown to bring out a softer, more gentle (if still somewhat overbearing) side to Bernard's personality; he is noticeably shy, awkward and self-conscious when attempting to charm Kate, a young woman he takes an interest in^[13], and is generous and eager to please when attempting to pursue Alice, a woman whom he forms a crush on during a summer heatwave - this relationship, however, was doomed by both Bernard's over-eager attempts to shower his 'summer girl' with presents and bad poetry, and the fact that Alice wasn't, in fact, interested in him^[14]. In the final episode, Bernard revealed a far more sympathetic side to his character, telling Manny that he had once had a fiance who had died before they could be married, thus explaining much his nihilistic view towards life, as well as largely sour and spiteful attitude towards other people; however, in an example of black comedy, Bernard later discovered that not only had his fiance, Emma, faked her own death in order to escape being with him, but that Fran not only knew about it but was in fact very close friends with her and had seemingly informed everyone except him. This betrayal almost shattered their friendship, but they managed to reconcile^[15].