A British response to ‘Dinner for One’

Last Friday a German student of ours brought up the topic of ‘Dinner For One’ during our weekly students’ lunch. Initially I wondered whether he was asking our opinion on eating out alone but after a few moments a vague memory of this black and white short film came to mind.

If you mention ‘Dinner For One’ to most Brits, they are unlikely to know what you are talking about unless they happen to have spent some time in a German-speaking country or perhaps in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe where the film is also popular. The reason for this is that despite being originally written by a British author and the dialogue being entirely in English, ‘Dinner For One’ has not been aired on British TV for over 30 years and as such is not the New Years Eve staple here that it has come to be in other countries.

Also known as ‘The 90th Birthday’, or by its corresponding German title, ‘Der 90. Geburtstag’, ‘Dinner for One’ is a two-hander comedy sketch written by British author Lauri Wylie for the theatre in the 1920s. German television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) later recorded an 18 minute-long performance of the piece in 1963 which went on to become one of the most frequently repeated TV programmes of all time. It has become somewhat of an institution in Germany with as much as half of the population tuning in to watch it every New Years Eve.

The film features a 90-year old upper-class Englishwoman, Miss Sophie, who is enjoying a celebratory birthday meal with 4 imaginary (presumably deceased) friends, following "the same procedure as every year" (the film's catchphrase). Meanwhile the butler serving the meal takes it upon himself to keep up the charade, consuming the 4 friends’ drinks as they toast Miss Sophie's birthday and becoming increasingly drunk with every course. The main source of hilarity is a tiger-skin rug with a large head which the butler trips over each time he goes to fetch the next course.

Now, I don’t mean to be a party pooper but from a British point of view, I can't say I'm convinced that this is the best we have to offer by means of comedy. In fact I find its popularity rather mystifying. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself by clicking the image below! 

Elementary My Dear Watson…

On 1st January 2014 over 9 million viewers in Britain tuned in to watch the BBC’s hit show ‘Sherlock’ with a further 3.5 million who watched later on catch-up. It also holds the record for the largest number of people tweeting about a drama during a broadcast on UK television (averaging at 2046 tweets per minute during the broadcast).  

But what is it about this show that makes it so appealing to the British public? A good deal of the credit for this lays at the door of the programme's creators Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss. They are both writers for another extremely successful BBC drama, ‘Doctor Who’, and are clearly very good at what they do. The story goes that they developed the idea for the series during numerous train journeys to the Doctor Who production base in Cardiff. 

However, I think that the person who deserves the most credit is the man who inspired both Moffat and Gatiss in the first place; the character of Sherlock Holmes himself, as created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

It is not without reason that Sherlock Holmes has become the archetypal detective. 

Conan Doyle was a delightfully eccentric man and, in my opinion, something of a genius. In Sherlock Holmes, supported by his dedicated chronicler and best friend Dr. Watson, he managed to create a character who is both fascinating and almost superhuman in his wide ranging abilities and yet is somehow very believable and endearing as a person.    

When they first meet, Dr Watson says of Holmes "I had no idea that such individuals exist outside of stories”, which indeed they probably do not. However, when reading Conan Doyle’s stories it is impossible, if not to believe, then to at least hope that they do.    

Interestingly the phrase “elementary my dear Watson” that most people associate with the character of Sherlock Holmes was never used by Sherlock in any of the Conan Doyle stories. 

Neither, in the books, does he have a great love or attachment to deer stalker hats. 

These apocryphal elements of the Sherlock Holmes story have been toyed with in the BBC’s Sherlock (along with Watson’s moustache) in what I believe is a playful nod and a wink to fans of the original works of Conan Doyle.  

To find out more, tune in to the final episode in the latest series this Sunday at 8.30pm on BBC 1 or catch up on the series so far here.

Alternatively, if reading is more your thing, then why not read the first ever Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Study in Scarlet’ here.

Britain's Latest Reality TV Craze

The first series of Big Brother marked the start of Britain's reality TV boom. The series soon spread to other countries and became a global sensation with hundreds of millions of viewers tuning in every day. 

It is hard to say why it became so popular, and after the second series it began to get, well,  a little boring. 28 series later, their fanbase has, rather understandably, ebbed away, with a few die hard followers still clinging on. Other popular reality TV shows include The Apprentice, Britain's Got Talent, and The X-Factor.

More recently a new kind of television has spawned, known as the structured reality TV show. These type of shows aim to give the public a glimpse of what life is like when living, and being part of a society in a specific area of Britain. So far three of these kind of series have been screened: The Only Way is Essex, Made in Chelsea and Geordie Shores. 

A few members of OISE Oxford's staff admit a guilty pleasure in watching Made in Chelsea (AKA MIC). It follows the lives of a group of extremely wealthy twenty-something year olds living the high life in one of central London's most affluent areas. It is undeniably cringeworthy and a lot of the scenarios are quite obviously set up. However, it is worth mentioning that a few of the actors are local Oxford folks, which, as you can imagine, makes it all the more entertaining. Or is that just a bad excuse?

Click on the image below to read more about the latest gossip from MIC