Bernard and Manny can't hear themselves argue because the shop next door is undergoing some round-the-clock construction. The noise drives Bernard, Manny and Fran up the wall. So Fran suggests a holiday. Bernard and Manny find baggage in her luggage. There's nothing in the crisp packet and Manny's pants aren't that easy to fold. Will the customer crack the system? What happens on the riverboat? Just how many monkeys are missing in Canada?
Black Books is a second-hand bookshop in London run by an Irishman named Bernard Black. He is probably the planet's worst-suited person to run such an establishment: he makes no effort to sell, closes at strange hours on a whim, is in a perpetual alcoholic stupor, abhors his customers (sometimes physically abusing them) and is often comatose at his desk. Help comes in the lumpy shape of Manny Bianco, a hairy, bumbling individual who (almost by osmosis) becomes Bernard's assistant. Manny is not exactly great at the job either but he is a million times better than Bernard. Next door is Fran, an anxious, frustrated woman who runs a sort of new-age shop selling the most unlikely bits of arty junk. Fran is friends with Bernard and, through him, with Manny; together the trio become embroiled in escapades that are sometimes extreme or unhappy or fantastically ludicrous, and always bizarre.