In the annals of redemption stories about dead souls, former folk musician turned pop star Herb McGwyer isn’t the most damned, but he’s not that easy to like, either. And by dead souls, what I mean is the idea that there’s a spark that’s been mostly extinguished, a glowing ember that burns a little brighter in British comedy The Ballad of Wallis Island.
Herb (as played by Tom Basden) is the epitome of the bitter modern sellout, even if he still has a spark of a conscience. He may have been summoned to a small island somewhere on the Welsh side of Britain’s Bristol Channel by the promise of half a million quid, but he won’t do a private gig for some corporate fat cat, as he warns wealthy superfan Charles (Key). But in this charming and bucolic character comedy, very much in the tradition of Local Hero and The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain, it’s never really about the money.
Basden and Key have reunited with director James Griffths for what is basically an extended version of their 2007 BAFTA-winning short “The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.” However, the story is now not just longer: It’s much, much deeper, not least because it’s expanded from a two-hander. The original short is an awkward buddy comedy, and The Ballad of Wallis Island brings in three major female characters. Most obviously significant is Carey Mulligan as Nell Mortimer because, unlike in the short, Herb wasn’t a solo act but half of McGwyer Mortimer. In many ways, the McGwyer of the short is the McGwyer of the feature, the kind of early 2000s folkie who grew up on Steeleye Span and Nick Drake. However, the feature script by Key and Basden brings in the harmonies and disharmonies, both musical and emotional that accompanied many 1970s bands. There’s a decade-long void between these two former lovers, and the impossibly awkward Charles bringing them back together in the isolated location evokes a bittersweet glow.
Basden and Mulligan are completely convincing as former partners, aided in no small part by how Basden has taken the songs he composed for the original and turned them into duets. The undeniable romantic and creative tension between them is only more perfectly strained by Ndifornyen as Nell’s bird spotter husband, the only person who gives Charles a run for his dorky money.
It’s in the growth of Charles from the short that The Ballad of Wallis Island truly blooms. Probably best known in the U.S. as silly sidekick Simon in 2014’s Alan Partridge or from his appearance on the first season of Taskmaster, Key’s earlier version looked and acted like a socially malformed teen in a twentysomething’s body. Here, Key has the age and experience to make him more than just a young guy with too much cash. Instead, he’s haunted by the specter of his own lost love, his adored Marie (depicted by Kerrie Thomason in old and treasured photographs), who died five years earlier. There’s a melancholy to his isolation, with the implicit idea that there’s as much missing from his life as there is from McGwyer’s. At the same time, Key makes him a perfect bumbling fool, his train-of-thought ramblings often derailing his tentative romance with the third new female character, local shopkeeper Amanda (Clifford), who provides much of the gentle city-versus-country culture clash comedy with McGwyer.
Under the gentle hand of Griffiths, The Ballad of Wallis Island is both hilarious and delicate, never even making the buffoonish Charles simply a figure of mockery. In an understated way, it’s also about the importance of ritual in our growth as people. The final gig and the local tradition of seaman’s day both play a role in helping that last little spark of artistic and personal integrity in McGwyer’s soul reignite. In its elation and redemption, the film perfectly captures what Nick Drake sang on “Time Has Told Me,” the opening track of his era-defining first album, 1969’s Five Leaves Left: “So leave the ways that are making you be/What you really don’t want to be.“
This article appears in April 4 • 2025.