Silver Service

What Silver Service is about

A restaurant on the Brighton seafront, silver cutlery, white tablecloths, and a sign on the door giving the final day. Four weeks, then it is over. The waitress who has served here for years is saving every tip towards a bakery of her own. She is still a little short. And then there is table nine. Every Thursday the same man sits there, grey hair, a widower, always alone, always the same order. He says little, pays on time and watches her walk back to the kitchen. Until one quiet evening she sets down her tray and sits in the empty chair opposite him.

From that Thursday on, nothing is routine any more. He draws, it turns out, and what he draws is her, and has been for longer than she suspects. The episode titles map the route: a sketchbook, a sitting as his model, rain on the pier, an evening when table nine is only an excuse. Thirty years lie between them, along with the glances of her colleagues and the question of whether a woman with a business plan has time for a man who would rather spend his evenings with memories. Both are grown up enough to know how it looks. Both sit down again anyway.

Episode 1, The Other Chair, stays entirely in the restaurant: the last guest, polishing cutlery, the chair that stays empty until she takes it. You watch her study him, and him study her, and neither of them looks away first. One question is left hanging after episode 1, namely what is in the folder beside his plate. Whether the bakery ever opens and who is still at the table for the last service, only the finale will tell you.