What is the name of that British televised play that is watched every year at Christmastime with the old lady who has her butler act the part of all her dinner guests as he gets more and more sloshed?
I think you mean Dinner for One.
If that’s the one, the key thing is that it’s ‘famous’ because it’s shown in Germany (and some other places) every year. I don’t know that it’s ever been shown in the UK since its first broadcast, certainly when this gets discussed the consensus seems to be few of us Brits have really seen it.
Dinner for One http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121210/
Yep. Its “Dinner for one”. Here in Denmark it is shown every year on New Year’s Eve, not Christmas.
Ah yes, Dinner For One.
A classic for New Year’s in Germany.
At parties, or home alone, people would gather around the television shortly before midnight to watch this.
As an American, it was odd that almost every German in the country watched this (in English, and no subtitles) and laughed uproariously, even if they didn’t speak a word of English.
Here is the YouTube link if you would like to see it.
Never heard of it before! Fascinating.
Thank you! I googled every descriptor I could think of and kept coming up empty. I kept thinking it was Dinner For Six which, of course, it isn’t.
Never heard of it but must check it out. I knew it wasn’t the answer but the OP reminded me of the movie Candleshoe, a Disney movie starring a teenaged Jodie Foster whose character is a U.S. street urchin who may or may not be the missing heiress to an English estate. The estate has fallen on very hard times and its mistress, Helen Hayes (the grandmother of the missing heiress) is nearly penniless and abandoned by her wealthy friends, so her butler (David Niven) goes through the charade of dressing up like a chauffeur, a Scottish gardener with a bad attitude, and an aristocratic ex-military neighbor who occasionally comes to call on her.
Mild spoiler: It turns out that he hasn’t been fooling Hayes but she’s too amused to let on that she knows.
That was the unfunniest piece of shite I’ve seen for some time. No wonder they don’t broadcast it here! Tradition’s a very strange thing.
That’s a pretty good film for a 70s Disney live-action. I just watched it again this year, for the first time since it came out, and was pleasantly surprised. Leo McKern plays a splendid villain in it too.
There is a lego versionon YouTube, as well.
[QUOTE=Baron Greenback]
Leo McKern plays a splendid villain in it too.
[/QUOTE]
Leo was the man. Perhaps it was his Gimli like build, but he stole every scene he was in no matter the project- The Prisoner, HELP!, Man for All Seasons, and of course Rumpole (where he was the star for a change).
It’s shown every year on New Year’s Eve here too.
He’s also good in a small role in The Mouse That Roared with Peter Sellers.
While the humor in this might not be to your liking, watch again and pay attention to the butler. His timing and acting is flawless.
ETA make that brilliant.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch it again, thanks. Once was enough. The butler played his part very well and I never said he didn’t - I just said it wasn’t funny.
The really weird depatment: Ovet the weekend I read The New Year’s Quilt, which has a long passage about Dinner for One. I have never heard of the show before.
cue Twilight Zone music
I think I might have found it funny back in the 1960s, but not now. My 15-year-old doesn’t much appreciate it, either. But the Lego version was nice, at first.