Short English comedy sketch still serving up laughs on German TV

No one quite knows why the 18-minute sketch, Dinner for One, by two English actors has attracted millions of television viewers in Germany on New Year’s Eve for the past half-century.

Freddie Finton trips over the tiger-skin rug in the Dinner For One sketch. Picture: SBS

No one quite knows why the 18-minute sketch, Dinner for One, by two English actors has attracted millions of television viewers in Germany on New Year’s Eve for the past half-century.

Some put it down to a shortage of comedy on German TV, others to its enduring black-and-white charm that takes this ageing society back to the cosy, simpler times of West Germany during the economic miracle. A fascination with English aristocracy may also have something to do with it.

Whatever the reason, few doubt Germany’s most frequently repeated TV production is here to stay as a rock-solid, end-of-year tradition.

Australia’s SBS has shown the sketch every New Year’s Eve since 1989.

In a fresh sign of Germany’s infatuation with the dated skit, a six-part comedy ­adventure series has been announced as a prequel to it, with filming due to begin this year.

Recorded for German TV in 1963, Dinner for One stars ­ English comedian Freddie Frinton as James, an aged butler who is required to serve all four dead friends of batty aristocrat Miss Sophie, played by May Warden, at her 90th birthday dinner.

Freddie Frinton and May Warden in 1963 TV show Dinner For One.

Repeated toasts make James drunk and he keeps tripping over the head of a tiger-skin rug.

The sketch ends in innuendo as the two climb up the stairs ­together, presumably to her bed chamber, and he promises to “do my very best”.

Grainy and undubbed, it still attracts ratings of 15 million, on a par with big World Cup matches.

“In the 18 minutes of the sketch, smartphones and digital gaming devices are completely forgotten,” said Andreas Gerling, ­entertainment co-ordinator of the ARD network. “The family gathers in front of the TV, recites Miss ­Sophie’s text passages by heart and laughs at butler James.”

German audiences will have a chance to trace the stories of Miss Sophie’s friends – Sir Toby, ­Admiral von Schneider, Mr Pomeroy and Mr Winterbottom – in the new show, described by the UFA Fiction film company as a “romantic, funny adventure series”. Each episode will be 45 minutes.

Tommy Wosch, who wrote the screenplay, said: “When I was a child I always asked myself why the four men aren’t sitting at the table and what they might look like. It would be a dream to produce a New Year’s Eve classic.”

The original sketch, written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre, was performed by Frinton in Blackpool, where he was spotted by German TV show host Peter Frankenfeld, who was on a talent-spotting tour.

The Times