Episode 1 , After Manny Eats The Little Book Of Calm

Manny: Add a drop of lavender to your bath and soon, you'll soak yourself calm.
Doctor: I'm sorry?
Manny: If you want to feel calm, eat more raw fruit and vegetables, yoghurt, milk and seeds.
Doctor: Uh maybe I should let you get some rest...
Manny: When you rest, you are a king, surveying your estate. Look at the woodland. The peacocks on the lawn. Be the king of your own calm kingdom.
Doctor: Uhh... yes...

Manny: (to woman giving birth) When you're feeling under pressure, do something different. Roll up your sleeves, or eat an orange.

Manny: (to Fran) Be on the look out for things that make you laugh. If you see nothing worth laughing at, pretend you see it, then laugh.

Episode 2

Bernard: What do they want from me? Why can't they leave me alone? I mean, what do they want from me?!
Manny: Well they want to buy books.
Bernard: Yeah but why me?! Why do they come to me?!
Manny: Because you sell books.
Bernard: Yeah, I know...

Bernard: (to Manny) You there. Lord of the Rings. Let's talk about how this whole one-day trial thing is going. At the moment, you're fired.

Episode 4

Bernard: I went to the chemist to get some Fizzy-Good.
Fran: Some what?
Bernard: You know, some Fizzy-Good, Fizzy-Good-Make-Feel-Nice.
Fran: Oh, Alka-Seltzer.

(a little boy in pyjamas walks into the room)
Gerald: (to Bernard) Oh you remember Jimbo, don't you?
Bernard: I'm not sure... (to Jimbo) What do you do?
Gerald: No, he's our son.
Bernard: Oh thank god. I thought you had a disease! It's a child!

Bernard: Ah Jim. Jim Jim Jim Jim Jim. Come here. We'll do the thing. Here. Here. There we go... (gives Jimbo some money) Take it. Take it. Now. Actually Jim, could I have that back? (takes money back off Jim) Shh! So Jim, have I ever told you about the old country? The songs! Oh Jim, they'd melt your face. "Ohh I live in a shoe on Moore Street, I'm a prostitute from Newry".

Bernard: So I go to the toilet in your wicker chair, it's a faux pas.

Gerald: Look at Jimmy.
(Jimmy has an unchaging wide-eyed look of horror fixed on his face)
Bernard: What? What? What? He looks surprised. All children look surprised. Everything's new to them!

Bernard: I mean, I come to your house, I bring a bottle of wine...
Sarah: You brought a policewoman!
Bernard: Policewoman, bottle of wine, point is I made an effort

Episode 5

Bernard: (to the customer who thinks Bernard is selling good books too cheaply) But I don't want them. I mean, you know, I have to price them, and then put them up on the shelves and store them and people will come in and ask about them and buy them and read them and come back and sell them, you know, and the whole hideous cycle will just go on and on and on and on, you know?

Bernard: Excuse me. There seems to be some sort of mistake. I bought, I bought a drink and some popcorn and now I have no money.
Movie cashier boy: That's how much it costs.
Bernard: Why? Is it special popcorn? Does it produce some kind of dizzying high?

Bernard: (talking to a homeless person on the street) Excuse me, this might sound a bit funny, but could I please have 10p?

Episode 6

Bernard: Manny, stop singing in the bath!
Manny: I'm not in the bath, I'm on the toilet.
Bernard: Who sings on the toilet? Stop singing on the toilet then!

Customer: You know, I'm probably getting a lot of secondary smoke from you.
Bernard: Don't worry about it. Get me a drink sometime.

Fran: Oh my god. Mickey Rourke had another facelift. He looks like his trousers

Season 2 memorable quotes

Bernard: I've got to get a girlfriend, just for the summer, until this wears off. She'll be a summery girl. She'll have hair. She'll have summery friends who know how to be outside. She'll play tennis and wear dresses and have bare feet, and in the autumn, I'll ditch her, because she's my summer girl!

Manny: Where are you going?
Bernard: Out. Courtship calls. I'm going to get Allison chocolate and flowers and chocolate flowers and florettes of chocolate. I'm sending a truckload of woo.

Bernard's poem to Allison:
Think of a bee
You are its knees
You waft through me like a summer's breeze
Can I come round Tuesday please?

Bernard: Perhaps you'd like me to put the price down.
Customer: Well I was thinking two pounds.
Bernard: Because three pounds is just naked profiteering? For a book, a mere... 912 pages long? What'll I do with that extra pound? I'll add an acre to the grounds. I'll chuck some more koi carp in my piano-shaped pond. No, I know, I'll build a wing on the National Gallery with my name on it.
Customer: £2.50.
Bernard: That's more like it. Now you're being reasonable. (Grabs book) £2.50 gets you (rips a bunch of pages out of the book and hands the rest of the book back to the customer) this much. The rest when you come back with the other 50p.
Customer: But...
Bernard: Thank you!
(later on)
Customer: I have to have the rest of that book! Here's that 50p.
Bernard: (holding the rest of the book) Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I was thinking £15.
Customer: What?
Bernard: No, you're right. 25.

Bernard: (telling Manny the shop doesn't need repainting) The shop is the way it is because it is the way it is. If it wasn't the way it is, it wouldn't be the way it is.
Manny: It needs doing.
Bernard: It's charming. It has character.
Manny: Character is an ambience. A feeling. It's not something with fur and a beak.

Bernard: We can't let them find reasons to leave. We can feed them! Lunch and dinner! We'll build a pool! And a gym! And an Egyptian-style casino! No, that's a bit much.

Bernard: From now on, the only stars we'll be looking at will be Dunlop stars!
Manny: Michelin stars.
Bernard: Them as well!

Customer: Excuse me?
Bernard: What? What?!
Customer: Do you have anything by Adam Phillips?
Bernard: How would I know? Go to a proper bookshop.
Customer: Look... there's no other way to say this, but I didn't come in here to be insulted.
Bernard: Well, I didn't ask for the job of insulting you. You know, in another life, maybe we could have been brothers, running a small, quirky taverna in Sicily. Maybe we would have married the local twins, instead of wasting each other's time here in this dump. But, it was not to be. So... hop it.

Bernard: (looking at Manny's Mauritius holiday photos) What? They're like any holiday photographs. A bunch of people stood around squinting, and didn't realise they were that fat.
Manny: Look, that's us outside the restaurant, and that's us outside the hotel.
Bernard: Ooh, what a transformation!

Bernard: (about Manny's photos) Why are you showing me these? I don't know these people. The only possible use this photograph would be to me would be if I was a hitman and somebody had asked me to take out Eddie, the gallery owner from Trent.
Manny: Kent.

Bernard: (to Manny) It was a thrill to recreate with you, but now our association ends! You have brought nothing but pain, penury and strife into my days. I wish you good fortune in whatever avenue of life you assault with your presence! Here's your redundancy package. Here. I'm sorry most of it's in Fanobian wooden dollars but that's largely your fault! Now good luck and goodbye!

Memorable quotes for
"Black Books" Manny Come Home (2004)

Bernard: [upon evicting Manny] Up with this I will not put.
Manny: But what are you going to do without me around? You can't live on the mushrooms in your hair!
Bernard: [pulls a mushroom from behind his ear and eats it] I'll be fine!

Evan: I took a risk when I hired you, Manny. Many people would have said 'Who is this rudderless hippy? How do I get away from him? Has he got a hunting knife strapped to his shin?'
Evan: Don't eat muffins when I'm developing you.

Bernard: [Evan has come to get Manny] Get your own human plaything!

[Bernard and Fran are spying on Manny who is now working for a rival bookstore]
Bernard: Look at him! He's half Iago, Half Fu Manchu, all bastard!
Fran: Manny? Bernard?
Bernard: Oh. It's you. Go round the green binbags. Turn right at the mouldy George Elliot, forward, forward and turn left at the dead badger.
Fran: Bernard, are you alright?
Bernard: Never better. I've discovered television.
Fran: Where's Manny?
Bernard: Him? He left. That's what happens when you love someone and nurture them and take care of them.
Fran: You mean you fired him.
Bernard: There may have been an incident involving a hand and a kitchen item and maybe the item was a sandwich toaster and maybe the hand was Manny's and maybe I introduced them to one another.
Fran: So he's gone.
Bernard: Oh no, he still sleeps here, burrowed in like the little tick he is. But he leaves every day. Every day is another betrayal.
Bernard: Look at him. He's bending down now. He's standing up now. I knew he'd do that.
Fran: Is this really helping

Memorable quotes for
"Black Books" Elephants and Hens (2004)

Manny: Well, instead of the? um? academic and the journalist's daughter? um? perhaps it could be about an elephant?
Bernard: An elephant?
Manny: That's right.
Bernard: I see. What's your other suggestion?
Manny: Well? um? instead of the Stalinist purges and the divorce and the investigation, um? it could be about losing a balloon.
Bernard: An elephant who loses his balloon?
Manny: That's it.
Bernard: But, but it would still be my story in essence?
Manny: Oh, yeah.
Bernard: My vision?
Manny: Completely.
Bernard: Yes, all right! Let's do that, then!
[Manny reads "The Elephant and the Balloon", the children's book he and Bernard have spent all night writing]
Manny: There's the elephant. He's happy with his balloon. Oh no! It's gone! Where is it? It's not behind the rhino. Look in the alligator's mouth.
Manny, Bernard: It's not there either.
Manny: Ohhhh... the monkey's got it in the tree!
Manny, Bernard: He brings it back. They all drink lemonade. The end.
Manny: Bernard, it's hot in the worm.

Memorable quotes for
"Black Books" The Travel Writer (2004)

Bernard: Hanley! Hanley, come out you blood sucker!
[the door opens]
Solicitor: Miss Hanley is dead.
Bernard: Eh?
Solicitor: She died in the night.
Bernard: I don't care... I mean, how awful.
Roland: So, let me guess: Mice. No, wait... you've got cockroaches.
Bernard: Yeah, we do, actually, but don't touch them, will you? It would upset the bat.
Roland: No I cant do it, I cant kill an innocent cat.
Bernard: Why not it will be easy bada bing bada meow.
Solicitor: Miss Hanley left this falt to a Mr. Benson, he's in the kitchen. What was it you wanted to query... Mr...?
Bernard: Black. I'll talk directly with him, I don't want any legal fidgiewidgieness upsetting natural justice.
[he enters the kitchen]
Bernard: Benson! Benson! Where is he? Benson?
Solicitor: Mr. Benson is in the bread bin.
Bernard: I said no legal fidgiewidgieness! I want to see the owner, I want to sort this out and I want...
Solicitor: [opens the bread bin, revealing Mr. Benson, a cat] He likes to sleep there. What was it you wanted to say to him?
Bernard: [unrolls a bill] I'm not paying this!

Memorable quotes for
"Black Books" Party (2004)

Bernard: [describing a party] Drinks were few and the people many... it was everything I expected and less.

Bernard: What is this... I'm drinking? It's disgu... It's like a choc ice fell into a bottle of bleach. It's children's booze! What's yours?
Fran: Bludge. It's quite good, actually. You don't even have to drink it. You just rub it on your hips and it eats right through to your liver.

Fran: [Fran is reading one of Bernard's short stories] "Feared by men and admired by women; Brendan Blake
[points to Bernard]
Fran: turned from the window and patted Larry
[motions to Manny]
Fran: ; his barely hominoid, milk-fed gimp."

Bernard: [to Manny] Right. We are going to this party, because I'm trying to picture the sort of girl who would be interested in you, and all I can see is you. In a dress.
[On a girl Manny is interested in]
Bernard: Who is she then, this so-called person?
Fran: Can't you just call her up and say 'I really enjoyed talking to you last night and I'd like to see you again'?
Manny: [giggling nervously] Don't be stupid! I don't want her to think I'm gay!

Manny: Let's paaaaar...
Bernard: Don't you dare use the word "party" as a verb in this shop!

Bernard: I had a girlfriend actually, she died. Her name was Emma. You're talking about someone you barely know knocking you back. Big deal. We were supposed to be living together by now but instead I wake up every morning and look from my cornflakes and see your big, snaggle-toothèd head.

Manny: That's the saddest story I've ever heard.
Fran: The worst part is she's not actually dead, she lives the other side of Priory Road.

Manny: [having sworn to Fran that he won't tell Bernard his deceased ex-fiancée is still alive] She's alive! She's still alive! Fran told me! Fran knows her!
Bernard: Is this true? How long have you known?
Fran: A couple of years.
Bernard: I don't believe you.
Fran: She's in my phone. Look. That's her full name isn't it?
Bernard: I don't believe you.
Fran: This is photo of her and me at her last birthday. One of many she'll have, still being alive. These are her dental records. This is her birth certificate. I keep it safely tucked inside the envelope with a photo of her reading yesterday's newspaper and wearing an "I love life" t-shirt.

Season 1

Episode 1: Cooking the Books

Original Air Date: 29 September 2000

Bernard is struggling to cope with getting down to menial but essential tasks for his book shop, such as the accounts when a chance meeting with a customer, Manny, helps him out. Meanwhile, the owner of the shop next door, enlists the help of Bernard and his customers to find out exactly what an object from her shop is and in doing so misses an important appointment.

Episode 2: Manny's First Day

Original Air Date: 6 October 2000

Bernard wakes up to discover that he has a new employee for his book shop, who infuriatingly has great skill at selling books. While Bernard is reluctant to keep him on, Fran makes her feelings clear on the matter.

Episode 3: The Grapes of Wrath

Original Air Date: 13 October 2000

After Manni calls a cleaner to the shop, he and Bernard must vacate it. Luckily they are asked to house sit for a friend. Meanwhile Fran goes on an ill-fated date.

Episode 4: The Blackout

Original Air Date: 20 October 2000

Manny stays up watching 'The Sweeney' and is mistaken for a policeman after chasing a handbag snatcher. Fran and Bernard exchange stories about their previous day, Bernard recalling a disastrous dinner party with old friends who blanked him and Fran telling him about blanking her boyfriend after catching him with another woman.

Episode 5: The Big Lock-Out

Original Air Date: 27 October 2000

The shop is robbed after Manny leaves it unlocked, and he arranges for a new security system to be installed that he immediately forgets how to operate, causing him to be locked in with no food while Bernard is locked out with no money. Fran runs into an old flame whose voice stirs up confusing feelings.

Episode 6: He's Leaving Home

Original Air Date: 3 November 2000

Manni finally gets fed up with Bernards constant abuse and demands on him so he leaves for a better life. However, he doesn't get far when he meets a man at Kings Cross station who wants to make him a star. Meanwhile back at the shop Fran and Bernard are arguing more and more about Manni's departure.

Season 2

Episode 1: The Entertainer

Original Air Date: 1 March 2002

Fran decides to take up piano lessons with a very prominent teacher, however all doesn't go to plan and she ends up having to ask Manni for a favour. Meanwhile Bernard asks a girl out and once again Manni is called upon for a favour.

Episode 2: Fever

Original Air Date: 8 March 2002

On a scorching hot day, Manni tries to maintain his body temperature so it doesn't go over 88 degrees; Fran has problems with a new neighbour, and Bernard tries to find an appropriate "summer girl".

Episode 3: The Fixer

Original Air Date: 15 March 2002

Bernard and Manni have to deal with a gangster turned writer who plans to hold a reading of his autobiography at the book shop, however he can't read. Meanwhile Fran gets an office job where she isn't quite sure what she is meant to be doing.

Episode 4: Blood

Original Air Date: 22 March 2002

Manni and Bernard try to keep up with modern book shops and in doing so Manni helps Fran get over her boredom by encouraging her to look up her family tree.

Episode 5: Hello Sun

Original Air Date: 29 March 2002

Fran tries to cleanse her lifestyle by taking up yoga and going on a radical diet, while Bernard and Manni receive some books on Freud and their lives descend into his famous theories.

Episode 6: A Nice Change

Original Air Date: 5 April 2002

When construction starts next door to the shop, Manni, Bernard and Fran try to decide what to do while it continues.

Season 3

Episode 1: Manny Come Home

Original Air Date: 11 March 2004

When Manny defects to Goliath Books after an "incident" with Bernard, his ex-employer's life spirals out of control. Meanwhile Fran returns from holiday only to be greeted by the squalor of Bernard's shop.

Episode 2: Elephants and Hens

Original Air Date: 18 March 2004

When Bernard holds a children's themed book day in the shop, Fran bets Manni and Bernard they couldn't write a children's book over a weekend, while Bernard bets Fran back that she will have an awful time at her friend's hen party.

Episode 3: Moo-Ma and Moo-Pa

Original Air Date: 25 March 2004

Manny is panicking about the impending visit of his parents - Fran blackmails Bernard into letting them stay by threatening to tell Manny Bernard has been screening his calls to keep him from going anywhere. When Manny's parents arrive however, the duo are forced to corroborate some slightly embellished details from Manny's letters home.

Episode 4: A Little Flutter

Original Air Date: 1 April 2004

Manny places a bet on the Grand National for Bernard who immediately becomes addicted to the thrill of gambling having previously expressed no interest. But his losses mount, and he starts borrowing gambling funds from increasingly scary people.

Episode 5: The Travel Writer

Original Air Date: 8 April 2004

Manny organises a travel-writing festival and invites a charming explorer to talk about his adventures. Fran soon falls for his twinkling eyes and lavish hair, leaving Manny ragingly jealous. Meanwhile, Bernard hires an assassin to solve a financial problem with his neighbour. Featuring Julian Rhind Tutt.

Episode 6: Party

Original Air Date: 15 April 2004

Fed up with being stuck in the dusty old bookshop on a Friday night, and with the hopes of meeting a delectable young lady at a party, Manny and Fran persuaded Bernard to attend a party. After a night of heavy drinking, a very sloshed Bernard has a nasty surprise waiting for him.

In an interview on BBC radio in 2006, Dylan Moran said there won't be a season 4, but he was thinking about making a black books movie or writing a stage play... but of course he has to talk it over with Tamsin Greig and Bill Bailey.

However as of today 10th September 2008, there is no further news on any of these projects.

The shop front used for the filming of Black Books is actually a real London bookshop, If you are visiting London, the shop is the "Collinge & Clark" Bookshop, at 13 Leigh St, London WC1H 9EW;

It's a lot tidier and you are unlikely to have abuse hurled at you by the owner though.