Watch Dinner for One For Free

Must See Movie...

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One thing leads to another: playing Good Morning by the Beatles last night led to thinking about Meet The Wife from UK TV in the '60's to Freddie Frinton to this. Having just watched It's A Wonderful Life probably helped me think of other iconic Christmas films too. I used to enjoy Meet The Wife with him and Thora Hird although I was probably too young to fully understand even that level of slapstick, but I don't think that would have applied to Dinner For One! It's never shown on UK TV as they've all too clearly pandered only to sick, seedy and cynical humour for decades, but I finally saw it on German TV in the '90's. I thought it must have been a clip, now I'm not so sure as I've just seen it in its entirety of 18 minutes including introduction.Elderly Miss Sophie entertains her four guests at dinner served by her elderly butler – the only potential problem is she's outlived all her guests and the sane and sober lady gives her meal and drink orders to an increasingly drunk and boisterous butler to perform. Especially the last one! To most of the hundreds of millions of people around the world who've seen Dinner For One it represents an unbreakable tradition of seasonal hilarity, to others it represents repetitious pisstaking of alcoholics and the aged; such is humour. Frinton had trailed the sketch around UK variety stages for a decade before German TV filmed him doing it, the end result being the most repeated TV programme in the world ever. I used to like Frinton, he died too soon if not too young and because he had made too few films and too much of his TV material was thrown away he's been too easily forgotten over here. Just as funny as the sketch to me is the thought that ultimately this will be rightly remembered more fondly and longer by far more people than by any of the deadbeat filth UK TV pumps out nowadays instead. The sketch is on youtube in various versions and imho is well worth watching for Frinton's truly tour de force performance – he certainly did his best!

I hadn't heard of this short film a couple of hours ago, then there was an item on BBC Radio Four about how just about everybody in Germany watched it every New Years Eve. None of the British contributors found it remotely amusing but they did say it was on YouTube and that it was only ten minutes long... given that information I had to check it out for myself! Having seen it I'm surprised that it is considered a classic anywhere but equally it wasn't that bad either. The plot is simple; the elderly Miss Sophie is hosting a dinner party for her four friends... the joke is that none of them are present! As the dinner progresses James the butler serves each course to Miss Sophie then pours drinks for everybody and takes the part of each person in turn to return Miss Sophie's toasts with inevitable results.There are chuckles to be had as Freddie Frinton's James gets increasingly drunk although however the gag about him tripping over the tiger skin rug is rather spoilt by the fact that he tripped over it before he'd touched a drop! The rather suggestive ending was clearly meant to be funny but just seemed creepy to me. This was interesting to watch as a curiosity but it certainly won't become a tradition for me.I have since learnt that there are two versions made the same year with the same cast; this is the Swiss version; there is also a longer German version with a German narration, presumably that is the version they watch!

This short is definitely one of the funniest short films ever created. It is easy to consider it a simple, stupid slapstick with a guy acting drunk, and/or making fun of old people, but then you miss the point. This is not primarily about drunkenness or age, it is about British conservatism. And maybe that's why the British people never cared much for it, while other Europeans love it.Note that Miss Sophie is not suffering from senile dementia. She knows exactly what she wants: She wants things to be just like they always were. The poor James does his best to fulfill her wishes, and as he gradually drops out of his role, while miss Sophie still insists that everything should be done after the "same procedure as every year" things get truly hilarious.The sketch actually exists in two different versions, one slightly shorter than the other (11 or 14 minutes). The shorter one has better planned close-up shots, while the longer includes the "Must I?" questions, which clarifies that miss Sophie knows very well what she is doing. So both have strong points.No matter what version you see, you are likely to enjoy it... unless you are British, I guess. It is a British humor gem about British conservatism.

As a Brit working working in Sweden in the early 1980's, I first saw this hilarious sketch there and subsequently in Denmark. I knew of Freddie Frinton from the U.K. in music hall and TV performances but was totally unaware of the sketch's existence. I'm sure it would also be become a New Year institution in the U.K. if it was "introduced" there and made available on DVD. I believe there would also be a market for Germans and Scandinavians living outside those countries.I have Danish friends in the U.S.A. who would love to have a DVD of this. Does anyone know of a source, presumably in Germany, of the DVD shown on this site? Or maybe I have missed a link to such a site?!Roy Hindle