The British comedy sketch traditionally broadcast in Germany on New Year's Eve is Dinner for One.
The short English-language performance stars Freddie Frinton as the butler James and May Warden as Miss Sophie. Miss Sophie celebrates her birthday with an imaginary dinner party, while James serves four absent guests and gradually imitates their drinking habits.
German television first broadcast the sketch in 1963, and it became an annual New Year's Eve fixture. Its repeated screening made the phrase “The same procedure as every year” familiar to German audiences, even though the sketch was comparatively little known in Britain for many years.
The title can cause confusion because the program is British but its strongest annual television tradition developed in Germany and other northern European countries. It is not a feature film or a sitcom episode; it is a roughly eighteen-minute stage sketch filmed for television.