Faithless review: Baz Ashmawy comedy feels like Derry Girls set in Bray and it’s just as good
I laughed out loud twice in the first 10 minutes of Which is at least once more than anybody laughs through an entire season of your typical Irish comedy. So it’s a great start to this new show co-written by and starring Baz Ashmawy. His co-writer is Stefanie Preissner and there is the same gutsy pace here that made us sit up and notice of her
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Ashmawy plays Sam, an Irish-Egyptian Dad who becomes a single Dad when his wife is run over by an ice-cream van about three seconds after she left him because he’s useless. This opens the way for a comic misunderstanding at the wake when someone thinks she was run over by Mr Cohen from number 23, not Mr Cone.
The wake is genuinely funny, mainly because Sam’s brother arrives home with an air hostess he met on the plane, and she deserves a show of her own.
What sets this apart from a ‘setup/gag and repeat’ sitcom are Sam’s relations. His three young daughters have depth, they feel like three girls who lost their Mom. Add in a star-turn from Art Campion as Sam’s brother-in-law Cormac, making inappropriate gags about Muslims and there is real verve to this show.
It has no comic characters as such, like all the best comedies. There are no catchphrases and only one running joke (there is never any milk, signifying Sam’s uselessness). Ashmawy can act and he’s believably struggling here, too proud to ask his father for help now that he’s the sole breadwinner, and there’s no stream of money when you’re a comedy writer. It doesn’t help that his youngest daughter has nits.
His brother Zein is a proper funny bad ‘un, His eldest daughter Lina (played by Suzie Seweify) is the emotional heart of the whole thing, furious with grief and directing it at her father. All the characters, including Sam’s own father Mo, are given time to breathe so by the end of the second episode this feels like a decent drama with good gags, rather than a dreary comedy where the characters are serving the jokes. Add in that this revolves around an Irish Muslim family and is fresh and new in more ways than one.
You’ll remember Art Campion, Cormac here, as the priest in That’s what feels like, set in Bray. It even has a world-weary headmistress with a tight turn of phrase. The only difference here is that the focus is more on the adults than the kids. But it’s just as good. Give it a watch.
