European New 12 months’s Eve TV Meals Dinner for One to Get Prequel Therapy | Europe | Popgen Tech

A British music corridor sketch that has fallen into obscurity in its nation of origin however is an indispensable New 12 months’s Eve ritual in elements of continental Europe is to be given a brand new lease of life, after German manufacturing powerhouse UFA introduced this week that it could start with filming of a six-part prequel subsequent yr.

Initially written by selection playwright Lauri Wylie and first carried out in English music halls within the Nineteen Twenties, Dinner for One was recorded as a black and white movie for German tv within the early 60s, it was a New 12 months’s Eve staple -television schedules in international locations that additionally embrace Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland and Sweden for a minimum of fifty years.

The sketch – carried out in English – revolves round an apparently rich older lady, Miss Sophie (performed by Could Warden), who celebrates her ninetieth birthday by internet hosting a cocktail party for a bunch of male admirers – all extravagantly named and, it seems, lengthy lifeless.

Butler James (Freddie Frinton) faces the problem of bringing in a toast on behalf of every of Miss Sophie’s departed buddies, imitating them with rising gusto because the alcohol flows down varied aisles.

UFA’s deliberate prequel collection, Dinner for 5, based mostly on a 2002 crime caper by German creator Michael Koglin, takes place 51 years earlier than the well-known birthday celebration, within the yr 1921, at a rustic home close to Eastbourne, East Sussex.

5 males compete for the eye of the single and emancipated Miss Sophie, 39 years previous: Admiral Von Schneider, a Prussian militarist, the adventurer Sir Toby, the French bon vivant Mr. Pommeroy, Mr. Winterbottom, “an Englishman and colonialist” , and the son of the property’s butler, James.

“As a baby, I all the time requested myself why the 4 males weren’t sitting on the desk and what they may have seemed like,” producer and screenwriter Tommy Wosch mentioned when the commissioning of the collection was introduced on Thursday. “In fact, it could be a dream to provide a New 12 months’s Eve basic for the entire household.”

Even with out the help of a prequel, Dinner for One’s success as a cultural export continues unabated, its catchphrase “identical process as yearly” now as a lot a remark by itself ritualized operate as Miss Sophie’s birthday traditions .

This yr, the sketch will probably be proven no fewer than 18 instances on New 12 months’s Eve on varied tv channels, with the primary broadcast going out at 3.30pm and the final at 5.30am on New 12 months’s Day.

4 broadcasts will probably be dubbed in German dialects, together with Dutch or Flat GermanCologne or Kölschand two variations of Hessian.