Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’ on Peacock, a Sweet Little Comedy About Life, Love and Music

By John Serba

The Ballad of Wallis Island (now streaming on Peacock) is officially a Quirky Little British Comedy, the likes of which you’re surely familiar. You know, there’s a goofy, kind of stammery character, and a grumpy character, and some instances of comedy and pathos, of joy and pain, playing out in a bittersweet manner. The film began as a 2007 BAFTA-nominated short directed by James Griffiths and written by its principal actors, Tim Key and Tom Basden, and eventually grew into a feature film rounded out by a true heavy-hitter in Carey Mulligan. If all this sounds like a pleasant way to spend your time, well, you’d probably be right.

THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Charles (Key) isn’t much for silence. He has a habit of filling any empty spaces with mindless chatter. But he’s so damn affable, he makes it easy to overlook how annoying it can be. Unless you’re Herb McGwyer (Basden). See, Herb, as we’ll soon learn, is on a bit of a downswing – and now he’s sopping wet. He’s just arrived on Wallis Island, which is near Wales. The place doesn’t have a dock, so you have to hop out of the boat and wade to shore. Unless you’re like Herb and you have an awkward interaction with Charles and end up falling in. An audacious start to his visit, then, and it doesn’t get better anytime soon. Herb is one half of McGwyer Mortimer, a folk-music duo that broke up a decade ago. Charles is a McGwyer Mortimer superfan who hired Herb to play for an audience of “less than 100” on Wallis Island – although, to veer closer to the truth, it’s an audience of one: just Charles. And while he has the exuberance of five or seven or 10 men, he is still just one man with wide eyes, a big grin and a flumpy sweater. One very awkward man.

But he’s a very awkward man with a suitcase full of £500k in cash, payment for Herb’s performance. That goes a long way toward tolerating Charles’ inability to discern personal boundaries. It’s important to note that Charles isn’t the type to do or say whatever he pleases because he can pay people to put up with it. No, he’s just a sweet, gently dopey guy who seems to be pretty fragile around the edges. Charles could communicate better, mind you, especially considering he didn’t tell Herb that Nell Mortimer (Mulligan) also is being paid to show up and play. Yes, the same Mortimer of McGwyer Mortimer, a folk-music duo that broke up a decade ago as both a folk-music duo and a life-duo. Egads. And there she is, hopping off the boat with a smile and a husband, Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen), who’s thrilled to be here, because he can’t wait to observe the local puffin population. Nell’s well aware that Herb is present, and ready to, well, collect £200k less than Herb. Charles. Really. Transparency my man, transparency!

Now, if you thought Herb was a grumpy miserable sot because there’s no rice on the island in which to dry out his waterlogged phone, now he has to contend with an unplanned monumentally upsetting reunion for a performance on a windswept beach in the middle of nowhere for one goofy guy. One goofy guy who won the lottery, which is how he can afford it, and who’s still busted up from the death of his wife, and who’s too timid to ask one of his fellow islanders, shopkeeper Amanda (Sian Clifford), over for dinner. You thought Charles was hugworthy already. What we’re still not sure about is whether Charles wants McGwyer Mortimer just to get back together, or to get back together, although he’s innocent enough in demeanor that he likely did it just to experience a moment of bittersweet joy as he tries to navigate his lonely life. Dude just loves music and wants to hear his favorite musicians sing again. Is there a better use for one’s money? I think not.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Once debuted in 2007, and I can very much see how Wallis Island could be a continuation of that making-beautiful-music-together love story, 18 years later.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s almost too easy to pinpoint the most famous cast member, but Mulligan gives the richest performance. Her character wasn’t in the original short, and the short shrift Nell gets makes her feel tacked on, but Mulligan does a lot with very little on the page, memorably so.

Memorable Dialogue: Charles demonstrates the weird manner in which he tends to speak when he discusses the potentially rekindled spark between McGwyer and Mortimer: “I’m not talking musically, Herb. I’m talking chemistrarily.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Photo: ©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Our Take: Wallis Island is an understated charmer with nicely calibrated performances, lovely cinematography and a sneaky-deep screenplay that lightens the heft of its subject matter – depression, loneliness, isolation, the other side of fame – with some pleasantly familiar comedy. Key is perfectly loopy as the secretly sad superfan. Basden plays an incurable asshole who, of course, ends up being absolutely curable. And Mulligan elbows her way past an underwritten character and fills the divide between the two principal men with warmth and a grounded sense of reality. I liked how the film lightly satirizes a few Behind the Music cliches, as Herb desperately tries to revive a flagging career by donning the ill-fitting garb of a young pop star; meanwhile, Nell seems to have happily faded into her private life after being chewed up and spat out by the music business.

Which leads us to the true heart of the film: How intensely personal music can be for its writers, performers and listeners. As Nell and Herb try to once again work through heartfelt love songs they sang to each other, he struggles with their emotional weight while she understands that the songs are no longer theirs. Indeed, they belong to people like Charles, who’s absorbed the chords, melody and poetry into his life. They might mean more to him than to Nell and Herb at this point. They exist in the tender spot between his greatest joys and greatest pain, as he remembers the love he felt for his late wife when they listened, and now uses those same songs as salve for his wounds. In many ways, this is a silly little film that plays out predictably, but in others, it taps into profound truths about the relationship between art and the human soul. It could’ve been content to deliver a few light laughs and a little drama, but it ends up overachieving for our benefit.

Our Call: The Ballad of Wallis Island is a lovely little film. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.