Germany's famous New Year's Eve television sketch about Miss Sophie's dinner is Dinner for One.
The short English-language comedy features an elderly woman, Miss Sophie, celebrating her 90th birthday. Her four invited friends are absent, so her butler, James, serves each course and impersonates every guest. He also repeatedly drinks their toasts, producing the sketch's escalating physical comedy.
Although the sketch was written by British authors and performed in English, it became an unusually strong New Year's tradition in Germany and several other European countries. German television has broadcast it around New Year's Eve for decades, and many viewers know its repeated catchphrase, “The same procedure as every year.”
The program is often mistaken for a German production because of its cultural status there. Its cast includes Freddie Frinton as James and May Warden as Miss Sophie, and the recording commonly shown was made for German television in 1963.