"Black Books adheres to a more old fashioned, traditional sitcom format, which I think works, because in its own way, it's quite theatrical"
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Calling Black Books "old fashioned" is Moran slipping a compliment into what sounds like a limitation. In the early 2000s, British comedy was wobbling between mockumentary naturalism (The Office) and the shaggy, reality-adjacent vibe of stand-up culture on TV. Moran plants his flag somewhere almost defiantly untrendy: a traditional sitcom, built on tight setups, punchline rhythms, and a fixed world you can return to like a familiar room.
The key is the pivot: it works because it's "quite theatrical". That's not just an aesthetic note; it's a defense of artifice. Black Books isn’t trying to pass for life. It embraces the stage logic of farce: entrances and exits, heightened reactions, characters locked into exaggerated roles (misanthropic bookseller, long-suffering assistant, chaos agent friend) that can collide in clean, engineered ways. The shop itself functions like a set in the oldest sense, a pressure cooker with doors that slam and conversations that ricochet. The laugh track debate becomes almost beside the point; the show’s real "audience" is the form itself, a knowingly performed performance.
Subtextually, Moran is making an argument about comedy craft. Theatricality means control: timing, escalation, and clarity. In an era that often equated authenticity with quality, he’s insisting that something obviously constructed can feel truer to the emotional experience of being trapped in your own temperament. The traditional format becomes a container for Moran’s particular kind of barbed warmth: misanthropy played big enough to read as vulnerability.
The key is the pivot: it works because it's "quite theatrical". That's not just an aesthetic note; it's a defense of artifice. Black Books isn’t trying to pass for life. It embraces the stage logic of farce: entrances and exits, heightened reactions, characters locked into exaggerated roles (misanthropic bookseller, long-suffering assistant, chaos agent friend) that can collide in clean, engineered ways. The shop itself functions like a set in the oldest sense, a pressure cooker with doors that slam and conversations that ricochet. The laugh track debate becomes almost beside the point; the show’s real "audience" is the form itself, a knowingly performed performance.
Subtextually, Moran is making an argument about comedy craft. Theatricality means control: timing, escalation, and clarity. In an era that often equated authenticity with quality, he’s insisting that something obviously constructed can feel truer to the emotional experience of being trapped in your own temperament. The traditional format becomes a container for Moran’s particular kind of barbed warmth: misanthropy played big enough to read as vulnerability.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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