The Ballad of Wallis Island is an excellent new British comedy drama starring Tim Key, Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan. Almost two decades in the making, the film expands on the much-admired short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island, from 2007.
“When we started writing it, me and Tom were living together and writing a lot,” says Key. “We were young and prolific. We weren’t two guys who’d had an idea and then decided to develop the characters. We had lots of different sketches that we were equally excited about. But for some reason this one felt like it could be longer than a sketch.
“We didn’t have to work hard to find my character. He sort of existed as an amalgamation of teachers and uncles and venue managers. It felt very natural when we started doing it on camera. Then going back to it 17 years later was easy.”
Key is a versatile comedian, actor and writer – he’s renowned for his distinctive absurdist poetry and deadpan bent. His script (which he wrote with Basden) and cheery central performance make for a note-perfect movie. Key plays Charles, an eccentric double lottery winner living alone on a remote island. To commemorate the anniversary of his wife’s death, Charles hands over vast sums of money for a private concert reuniting McGwyer & Mortimer, a favourite folk duo.
The balladeers, Herb McGwyer and Nell Mortimer – played by Basden and Mulligan – are also former romantic partners. That both believe they’re performing solo leads to a strained reunion. Nell also arrives with her new husband.
“Obviously, it makes a difference having Carey Mulligan’s name on the project,” says Key. “It was quite a surreal conversation. It felt like quite a hypothetical conversation. Anyone is allowed to dream. Anyone can hypothetically write Carey Mulligan into their little thing. She was the top of our list. When we reached out to her, the fact that she knew who we were and was amenable to reading the script was very exciting. From start to finish she was just incredible.”
A hit at Sundance last January, The Ballad of Wallis Island has been praised by US critics as a “sublime, adorable comedy” and “the sort of hilarious heart-warmer that only comes around once or twice a year to offer a blessed break from darkness, snobbery and streaming schlock”.
“We couldn’t have been happier with the way the Americans responded to the film,” says Key. “It felt like a quirk of the universe that somehow this very British film would start in America. It was very surreal that the first time we saw it was in an auditorium with 1,400 people in Sundance. The first 30 seconds weren’t easy, but then they started to laugh.”
British panel shows such as Taskmaster and Richard Osman’s House of Games are graced by a wealth of witty folk, but only one of that merry-go-round of presenters and panellists has published two volumes of lockdown-themed verse.
“I went up the garden centre,” Key’s poem Flora opens. “Finally! I bought a cactus and some mint things/ and asked the cashier out. After work, we went up the park. I couldn’t kiss her because my tongue was/ less than two metres long.”
Starting with the weightily titled Instructions, Guidelines, Tutelage, Suggestions, Other Suggestions and Examples Etc: An Attempted Book, Key has published six poetry collections and released a poetry album, Tim Key: With a String Quartet. On a Boat.
His musings greatly enlivened Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, the much-missed TV review.
“That was a very interesting job,” says Key. “I’d never written poetry prescriptively before. I usually just go to the pub for last orders and scribble. I definitely didn’t know whether I’d be able to write about the news and serious themes. I don’t really follow the news. Mostly I was constantly trying to work out what my angle was so I wouldn’t be a complete disgrace.”
Wanting to do comedy was like watching Wimbledon and thinking, Oh, I wouldn’t mind competing at Wimbledon
Key, who is 48, studied Russian at the University of Sheffield. After graduating he became involved with Footlights, the Cambridge sketch troupe, despite not attending that university. Pretending to be doing a PhD, he teamed up with Basden, Stefan Golaszewski and Lloyd Woolf to form the sketch troupe Cowards.
“I don’t think it was particularly easy for my parents,” he says. “They see a lot of potential in you and helped you to go to university. I don’t know what they thought I would do, but trying to be a comedian probably wasn’t on their list. They were incredibly supportive, but occasionally I’d hear phrases about journalism or conversation about law. At some point, three or four years in, I was on Radio 4 and they could tell people in the village.”
In 2009 Key’s solo show The Slutcracker won the Edinburgh Comedy Award. He has gone on to perform seven more solo shows.
“It was all very unexpected,” he says. “I had a millimetre of the end of one toe in the comedy world when I was 24. When I was 23 I would have said I had absolutely no chance. I thought you had to have friends or family in the industry. I never felt that it was a real thing. I felt like I was living my life and things like The Two Ronnies were happening in a completely different universe. Wanting to do comedy was like watching Wimbledon and thinking, Oh, I wouldn’t mind competing at Wimbledon.”
In 2010 Key appeared as Sidekick Simon on Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge, an internet incarnation of Steve Coogan’s satirical creation. Key has reprised the role in the BBC series This Time with Alan Partridge and in the 2013 film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. It was a head-spinning experience for a former schoolboy fan of Partridge’s first TV appearances in the parody news show The Day Today.
“It was petrifying,” says Key. “I watched The Day Today as it came out. I loved Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci and Rebecca Front. I think you’d have to have a screw loose not to be worried. You don’t want to ruin a franchise and let down your 16-year-old self. So it was quite high pressure, going to work that first day. And leaving work as well. I didn’t know whether I’d done a good job. Now I’m very comfortable. I loved doing it.”
The Ballad of Wallis Island is Key’s first leading role since a series of big-screen appearances that began with The Double, in 2013, and continued through Greed, See How They Run and Wicked Little Letters to, most recently, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17. It’s not quite Mulligan’s glittering CV, but he knows his way around a set.
“It boggles the mind how many people were in the make-up team for Mickey 17,” says Key. “Our film was a more familiar thing, where you’re dealing with day-to-day things with maybe 17 other people, not 400. But someone from Mickey 17’s make-up department would easily have done another film of our size and then probably three more in the last year. So we surround ourselves with the best people we can possibly find.”
He has racked up additional TV credits on Time Trumpet, Inside No 9, The Witchfinder, Taskmaster and The End of the F**ing World. No wonder he gets recognised on the street. But for what?
“Peep Show is very high in the mix, just from doing two or three episodes,” he says. “Obviously, Partridge. In London, sometimes people have seen me in a show. And, during lockdown, me and Alex Horne and Mark Watson did an online parlour game called No More Jockeys. That rose through the rankings of things people know me for. I think there’s still a kind of cult following for that.”
The Ballad of Wallis Island is in cinemas from Friday, May 30th
