[Televisionary]

Fans of BBC's Hyperdrive or Channel 4's Black Books might just want to make their way down to the ABC Family booth at Comic Con. Cabler ABC Family will be on hand at the convention later this week to promote several of its series, including upcoming animated series Slacker Cats , about the misadventures of two ne'er-do-well cats. Voice talent includes Alex Borstein, Stephen Root, Dave Foley, Harland Williams, Sinbad, Emo Philips, and Nicole Sullivan. So what does this series have to do with Black Books and Hyperdrive ? I'm glad you asked. Creators Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley, who created the BBC2 comedy Hyperdrive (starring Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz 's Nick Frost) and wrote several episodes of the hysterically surreal Black Books --including one of my personal favorite episodes "Manny Come Home," which guest starred Simon Pegg--just happen to be the creators of Slacker Cats , which launches August 13th on ABC Family. They'll be at the ABC Famil...

One thing that everyone knows about me is my innate love of everything English. I spent a good deal of time during my childhood in the UK and attended Oxford. In between (and since), I've devoured everything quintessentially British: from novels to films to television over the years--first on good old PBS and then anglophile digital cable fix BBC America . So I am not quite sure how the delightfully surreal comedy Black Books managed to escape my notice for so long. I caught the first series on DVD (it was just recently released in the States last month) and am enthralled by the bizarro second series, currently airing on BBC America. Rarely have I ever seen a more bleak portrait of the working world or a more hateful and cruel character than Dylan Moran 's grumbling Bernard Black, the owner of the titular London bookstore. Bernard is an anti-social, chain-smoking, drunk misanthrope who owns and "runs" a small, musty book shop. The fact that he has engaged in this par...