'Genuinely funny': Lord Brennan reviews 'The Ballad of Wallis Island'
Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer and Carey Mulligan as Nell Mortimer| Image: Alistair Heap/Focus Features ©2025 All Rights Reserved
4 min read
A film with a huge heart that never descends into schmaltz, this is just the sort of beautifully conceived small-budget British film that we all need more of
Have you ever dreamt of booking your favourite musician for a personal performance? It’s a privilege reserved for super wealthy individuals celebrating a special birthday or the money-spinning corporate conference circuit.
I recently sat with The Killers’ lead singer Brandon Flowers and his manager at the Ivor Novello awards. They told me how one such well-paid corporate gig involved doing a short set for Walmart executives at 8.30am! Weird, but lucrative in the age of streaming.
In The Ballad of Wallis Island, the superfan booking fictitious former folk duo McGwyer Mortimer, played by Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan, is no rich oligarch or corporate junket organiser. Lonely lottery winner Charles Heath, played with equally hilarious and poignant effect by Tim Key, is the instigator.
Tom Basden as Herb McGwyer and Tim Key as Charles Heath
Image courtesy of Focus Features © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Charles lives alone on the eponymous island off the coast of West Wales where his home has become a shrine for the now defunct musical duo, the love of whose music he shared with his late partner. In her memory he invites them to play a gig for big money. The problem is that, like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, they have split both musically and romantically several years previously.
In the case of Bob and Joan we see their breakup depicted in the recent biopic, A Complete Unknown. Their musical reunion on the Rolling Thunder Tour inspired Joan Baez’s finest song, Diamonds & Rust. The question posed in The Ballad of Wallis Island is which of those two outcomes – diamonds or rust – will be the consequence of the forced reunion of our fictional musical pairing?
Director James Griffiths creates an atmosphere of fresh and breezy wholesomeness on the island, despite Tom Basden fearing his character may be trapped there by his eccentric patron.
But unlike some superfan movies there’s nothing threatening or creepy about Charles. He fills the empty space of his solitary life with a sort of terminal punsterism, as if to allow a moment’s silence without some quip might permit the pain of loss to intrude.
We enter a quirky world in the best tradition of the old Ealing comedies
The result is a genuinely funny film with a huge heart which never descends into schmaltz. In the cinema it easily passed the laugh-out-loud test.
There is a charming performance from Sian Clifford (best known as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s older sister in Fleabag) as the proprietor of the island’s only shop. Will she become Charles’ equally shy new soulmate, or will he never get round to asking her to the gig? If he doesn’t ask, he will be the only member of the audience. But will the gig even happen given the renewed tensions between MacGwyer and Mortimer?
The strong cast enables the suspension of disbelief for this somewhat contrived set up, and we enter a quirky world in the best tradition of the old Ealing comedies.
It’s the kind of beautifully conceived small-budget British film that we all need more of in a world of computer-generated comic book universes and soulless special effect action fests.
Tom Basden provides the soundtrack with sweet self-penned songs, to which Carey Mulligan adds her tender harmonies.
This is a very lovely, affecting film about the healing power of music. It left this reviewer yearning to jump in the car and speed to the Pembrokeshire coast, acoustic guitar on board, for some surfside strumming on the sunny sands.
Lord Brennan is a Labour peer
The Ballad of Wallis Island
Directed by: James Griffiths
Broadcaster: General cinema release
