Looking like an instant classic, The Ballad of Wallis Island is that rare thing: a beautifully crafted feelgood Britcom with no Richard Curtis involvement whatsoever. Though, while we’re about it, Curtis himself has called it “one of the greatest British films of all time.”
On the face of it, it could not have come from a more unlikely corner. Writers/stars Tom Basden and Tim Key are probably best known (if at all) for their collaboration on Tim Key’s Late Night Poetry Programme, a BBC Radio 4 show mixing larky verse (Key), quirky music (Basden), and painful/funny interaction between the pair in linking material that has a loose, Larry David meta-ness to it.
They bring their personas from that show to this story about a rich man who invites a folk duo to perform on his island somewhere off the coast of Wales. Key plays Charles Heath – bumptious, socially inept, inadequate, dad-joking, infuriating, pitable and never not talking, a widower who has won the lottery (twice!) and is using the money to bring about the reunion of McGwyer & Mortimer, a folk duo who were once partners in life as well as music, in a concert for him and him alone.
Basden plays Herb McGwyer, a diffident but proud singer and guitarist whose career has been on the skids ever since he split from Nell Mortimer, who arrives on the island with a new husband in tow, to Herb’s obvious discomfort.
Carey Mulligan is the casting coup, as Nell, a sweet but clear-sighted woman who has turned to artisanal chutney-making since splitting with Herb and is very happily married to Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), who would be the awkward fifth wheel in this situation if Charles weren’t already monopolising awkward.
Basden and Key’s brilliant stroke is to mix up plot elements of Misery (the number-one fan) and The Philadelphia Story (the second time around) while keeping things very decidedly British. Some knowledge of white British middle-aged men’s cultural touchstones is useful, but you don’t need to get all the various references to Alan Whicker, Alton Towers or Michael Palin, because the humour in general springs from the characters rather than in-jokes or set-up/pay-off gags.
The songs are, sharp intake of breath, actually good. Basden wrote them and he works that Nick Drake seam, or the Richard and Linda Thompson (John and Beverley Martyn maybe) vein when Herb and Nell sing together. Folky and ethereal in that English way of the early 1970s.
For a comedy based on awkwardness it is relentlessly good natured, and no matter how irksome and socially clumsy Charles gets, he’s also doggedly likeable and is a decent sort working through the loss of his obviously much-loved wife.
A story of personal burnout and rebirth that avoids the pitfalls of excess sentimentality (though there is quite a bit), it’s directed James Griffiths, who also directed the short it’s based on – 2007’s The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island. He keeps things moving along and doesn’t let things wallow when they sometimes might. Quick, quick, he seems to be saying to his performers, particularly when Charles is interacting with local shopkeeper Amanda (the great Sian Clifford), who turns out to be as daffy and strangely semi-detached as he is.
Fans of the radio show (as I am) will be delighted that the Key/Basden personas have survived the transition to the big screen. Their conjuring of thwarted characters battling to remain optimistic against the odds is humane, funny and brilliantly done.
The Ballad of Wallis Island – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
