In Germany’s New Year’s Eve tradition, the short film broadcast as Dinner for One is titled The 90th Birthday.
The English-language sketch features an elderly woman, Miss Sophie, celebrating her 90th birthday with a dinner attended symbolically by absent guests. Her butler, James, serves each course and imitates the guests’ drinking, repeatedly delivering the line “The same procedure as every year.”
Although the sketch was written by British authors and performed in English, it became a major German television tradition after a 1963 recording. It is also shown in other northern European countries, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland, with varying broadcast traditions.
A common misunderstanding is that Dinner for One was originally made specifically for Germany. Its performers and language are British, but its exceptional recurring New Year broadcast status developed in German-speaking television culture.