Black Books is a sitcom that exhibits a personal condition called “happiness”. Watching it, one may imagine that it is real and even achievable. Perhaps the sole purpose of many movies is exactly that, but this one is particularly neat: the antagonist is a bookshop owner, who also lives in that bookshop; he drinks, smokes and reads all day long, disregards social norms, loathes people and acts accordingly, while nothing really bad happens to him. There also seems to be no sense of loneliness or boredom in his lifestyle. That must be because he has a couple of friends, and the customers are often around.
Of course, it is somewhat unrealistic, as comedies have to be. But a decent work overall.
Dylan Moran (one of the authors, who also played the main character) has been seen starring in and working on other fun movies, TV shows, and stand-up comedies, mostly fine ones. It is one of the cases in which you can look up nice movies by an actor or a director; Graham Linehan and Chris O’Dowd may lead to somewhat similar gems.