Film critic Paul Wells offers this assessment of Herman's work in the 2019 book Directors in British and Irish Cinema: "Herman has attracted little critical attention but his preoccupation with the underdog and personal and social injustice makes him a pertinent commentator on the decline of the English working class and its strategies for survival.
[2][9] In 1989, he made a short film, Unusual Ground Floor Conversion, which played in cinemas before Mel Smith’s The Tall Guy.
[10] Herman’s first feature-length project was Blame It on the Bellboy (1992), made for the Hollywood Pictures unit of Disney, a comedy of mistaken identity starring Dudley Moore, Bryan Brown, Patsy Kensit, Richard Griffiths, and Bronson Pinchot.
Mark Herman, a film school graduate who both wrote and directed this comedy, has concocted a witty mistaken-identity plot and done an able job of keeping it in motion.”[11] Next, Herman wrote and directed the critically acclaimed Brassed Off (1996), following the members of a colliery brass band, still struggling to survive a decade after the miners' strike.
The film also starred Michael Caine, Brenda Blethyn (who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), [15] Jim Broadbent, and Ewan McGregor.
The film starred Colin Firth, Heather Graham, and Minnie Driver, in a story about a British artist who relocates to small-town Vermont to get over a failed relationship.
Reviews were mixed, with Mark Adams in The Hollywood Reporter writing that “somehow it can't make the leap from an enjoyable light film to a movie to remember,” while Neil Smith on the BBC called it “a date movie that's well worth making a date with.”[18] His most recent work is the Holocaust drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which Herman adapted from the 2006 novel of the same name by John Boyne.
[19] The film divided critics strongly, with Ty Burr in The Boston Globe writing, “Because its gaze is so level and so unyielding, it stands as one of the better dramatic films made on this subject,” while John Anderson in The Washington Post called it “yet another attempt to revisit a sorrowful event in history that should never be forgotten or used for entertainment.” [20] Herman reflected in 2024 that “the challenge there was to tell a story that might pull kids in to want to learn more about the Holocaust.
"[22] It was made to raise funds to help pay the players wages, as the effects of Hull City's previous seasons money struggles were still visible.
[22] In June 1983, Herman filmed Hull City's end-of-season tour of Florida, where the players and staff visited Walt Disney World, and played the Tampa Bay Rowdies who were managed by Rodney Marsh, in the return leg of the Arrow Air Anglo-American Cup.