Bad-tempered bookshop owner Bernard Black is helped along by his faithful assistant, Manny. Manny is aided by Bernard's old friend Fran, who also tries to help him change his ways.
EPISODE 1
Cooking the Books
After his accountant flees from the police, Bernard is faced with the daunting prospect of doing his own taxes, and resorts to pairing his socks, getting drunk with door-to-door evangelists, and trying to seriously injure himself since it will allow him to defer his tax return. Manny, an accountant, enters Black Books for the first time in order to buy the The Little Book of Calm on his way to work and, against all odds, manages to swallow it. Fran is bedevilled by a weird, unfathomable sphere that isn't actually 'a bald furby'. Naturally, chaos ensues. At the end of the episode, we find out that Fran's sphere is actually a lighter which Manny demonstrates.
EPISODE 2
Manny's First Day
Bernard wakes up from a night on the booze to discover he's accidentally given Manny a job at the bookshop, and spends the day trying to get rid of him. Manny assists in this by proving to be a charming, sociable and extremely competent employee, apparently unaware that it's 'not that kind of operation'. An offering of wine from Manny and the threat of physical violence from Fran, however, persuades Bernard to keep Manny on board.
EPISODE 3
Grapes of Wrath
When the sheer filth of the bookshop becomes too much to handle for him, Manny calls a creepy cleaner and Bernard reluctantly agrees to house-sit for a friend. Unfortunately, the two manage to drink a very expensive bottle of wine that was due to be presented to the Pope, and have to figure out a way of either replacing it before he gets home or think of a present better than a box of pencils to compensate for it. Meanwhile, Fran goes on a date with a very nice man which is, unfortunately, nothing short of disastrous. At the end, Fran goes on a date with the cleaner, Bernard is distracted by his birthday, and jam fails to keep a bit of toast stuck to the ceiling.
EPISODE 4
The Blackout
On his birthday, Manny stays up all night watching The Sweeney and drinking espresso. Thinking he's a seventies cop, he manages to go from eyeing old men suspiciously in the bookshop to being trapped at the local police station helping a real detective put the 'good cop, bad cop' routine on a local villain. Bernard explains how going to a dinner party eventually led to a broken arm while Fran describes the steps from seeing her boyfriend having dinner with another woman to being in hospital with a neck injury.
EPISODE 5
The Big Lock-Out
After being burgled, Black Books gets a new alarm and security door fitted, but Manny fails to listen to the unlock code, distracted by a little Subbuteo player in the installer's hair ("there was a little man ... in his hair"). This quickly results in Manny being trapped alone inside with only a quickly-emptied bottle of Absinthe and dead bees for company and Bernard locked outside with just enough money for popcorn and a cinema ticket. Meanwhile, Fran has taken the phone off the hook to listen to silky-voiced Howell Granger read the shipping forecast on the radio, leaving Bernard to wander the streets of London penniless, cold and wet, with only an adult video shop and the allure of fast-food employment between him and freezing.
EPISODE 6
He's Leaving Home
Bernard finally breaks the last straw with his constant bullying, and Manny decides to leave home, but doesn't even manage to let Bernard know about this without being attacked by a bee in a telephone box and finding himself on the streets. He is soon picked up by a photographer with a beard fetish and is treated to a glamorous life of expensive clothes, satin sheets and crinkle-cut crisps in silver bowls, but such high living comes at a high price.
Dylan Moran
Bill Bailey
Tamsin Greig
Nira Park
Julian Meers
William Burdett-Coutts
Graham Linehan
