Since 1972, every New Year’s Eve, an 18-minute black-and-white comedy sketch called Dinner for One has been shown on German television. Except for a short introduction in German, the entire show is performed in English and stars May Warden as an elderly woman named Miss Sophie and Freddie Frinton as her butler, James.
Miss Sophie invited four of her friends to her 90th birthday celebration, even though none of them are currently living. James then has to assume the roles of the deceased guests, drinking a toast to Miss Sophie on behalf of each of them and getting progressively drunker as time goes on. “The same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?” he asks. “The same procedure as every year, James,” she replies.
Originally broadcast on the German TV station NDR in 1963, it was awarded the Guinness World Record for “Most annual airings of a television comedy sketch” in 2021. Even with the language barrier, Germans evidently can’t get enough of it, and it keeps being shown repeatedly throughout the day on December 31. The Guardian reported that over 12 million people tuned in to see Dinner for One in 2017 alone. That’s not including the 100,000 who watched it from places like Switzerland and Scandinavia that year.
Odd as it may seem, the tradition has yet to catch on in English-speaking countries. Though Dinner for One originated as a British stage sketch and it stars two British actors, it wouldn’t be shown on TV in the UK until 2018. Its success in Germany was in part due to its being developed specifically for NDR by German comedian Peter Frankfeld. The popularity of the sketch has spawned cookbooks, a commemorative stamp, and, more recently, a spin-off series on Prime Video.
Check out the original 1963 version of Dinner for One in its entirety below.
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