Faithless review: Baz Ashmawy comedy feels like Derry Girls set in Bray and it's just as good

Faithless is fresh and new in more ways than one.

Mo and Sam at the café in Faithless, Baz Ashmawy's new show for Virgin Media Ireland

I laughed out loud twice in the first 10 minutes of Faithless (Virgin Media One and Virgin Media Player). 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 work in  Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope. 

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.