Watch Dinner for One, the Short Film That Has Become a Baffling New Year’s Tradition in Europe

There are myr­i­ad New Year’s Eve cus­toms world­wide. In Japan, toshikoshi soba noo­dles are eat­en to bring in the com­ing year. In North Amer­i­ca, find­ing some­one to share a New Year’s Eve kiss with as the clock winds down has become a boon to the roman­ti­cal­ly-chal­lenged. In Ger­many, how­ev­er, a dif­fer­ent tra­di­tion has tak­en form: every year on Decem­ber 31^st, TV net­works broad­cast an 18-minute-long black and white two-han­der com­e­dy skit.

In 1963, Germany’s Nord­deutsch­er Rund­funk tele­vi­sion sta­tion record­ed a sketch enti­tled Din­ner For One, per­formed by the British comics Fred­die Frin­ton and May War­den. The duo depict­ed an aging but­ler serv­ing his aris­to­crat­ic mis­tress, Miss Sophie, din­ner on the occa­sion of her 90^th birth­day.

Although four addi­tion­al spots have been set at the table, the nonagenarian’s friends have long since passed away, and the but­ler is forced to take their places in drink­ing copi­ous amounts of alco­hol while toast­ing Miss Sophie’s health. Hilar­i­ty, as it is wont to do in such cas­es, ensues.

Since its ini­tial record­ing, the clip has become a New Year’s Eve sta­ple in Ger­many. Although Din­ner For One has nev­er been broad­cast in the U. S. or Cana­da, the clip has spread through­out Europe to Nor­way, Fin­land, Esto­nia, Lithua­nia, Aus­tria, Switzer­land, and beyond the con­ti­nen­t’s shores, to South Africa and Aus­tralia. In Swe­den, a bowd­ler­ized 11-minute ver­sion of the clip has been pro­duced, where, for decency’s sake, much of the butler’s booz­ing was excised along­side its atten­dant comedic effect. In Den­mark, after the nation­al tele­vi­sion net­work failed to broad­cast the sketch in 1985, an avalanche of view­er com­plaints has guar­an­teed its sub­se­quent year­ly appear­ance. Although the cat­e­go­ry is now defunct, the clip held the Guin­ness World Record for Most Fre­quent­ly Repeat­ed TV Pro­gram. As for why the video’s gar­nered so much atten­tion? No one’s real­ly sure. The Wall Street Jour­nal’s Todd Buell posits that the sketch’s easy to under­stand Eng­lish com­bined with a Ger­man long­ing for secu­ri­ty and sim­plic­i­ty may have led to its icon­ic sta­tus. To me, how­ev­er, it seems that the fine­ly tuned phys­i­cal com­e­dy trans­lates read­i­ly beyond any lin­guis­tic bound­aries, and sim­ply hit the right note at the right time.

Above, you can view the orig­i­nal 18-minute comedic opus and cel­e­brate New Year’s day in the same way that much of Europe brought in 2014 (don’t mind the Ger­man intro­duc­tion — the video is in Eng­lish). In future years, you can always find Din­ner for One in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

From all of us at Open Cul­ture to you, have a hap­py new year!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Willpow­er: 15 Tips for Mak­ing Your New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Last from Dr. Kel­ly McGo­ni­gal

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

A New Year’s Wish from Neil Gaiman

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan