Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

Sam Serrano has energy enough to power the National Grid and the charisma of a TV drama’s ‘queer best friend’. Or rather that should be ‘queer main character’ as they won’t be standing in anyone’s shadow for long.  

They’re appealingly confident in their persona and I felt the show was a rallying call for everything LGBTQ+ to be championed and the rest of us soft southern posh cunts (the comic’s words, not mine, deployed many, many times) to be thrown off a cliff. Serrano has something that makes you want to stay and listen.

The story begins with Serrano being the victim of an unprosecutable hate crime six years ago. Rather quaintly the show’s blurb says the comedian is now monetising the crime. Well, good luck trying to monetise anything in Edinburgh except bars and bedrooms. But it’s a useful peg on which to hang a debut, so fair enough.  

The result, Mars, is like a time lapse of someone growing up, being queer, not sure about being queer, embracing it and then being a living, breathing queer champion.  

We had homophobia explained to us, the misunderstanding that creates a harmful ignorance, which can be overcome. Serrano seems to have encountered an unreasonably large number of wilfully obtuse people in the family circle and around the circuit, all of whom needed patient correction, even if only to get their slurs right.  

There were a few too many stories of events and incidents arising from gigs, as if the comedy circuit is more real than life. It was amusing but there is something ‘othering’ about that constant focus on other shows when you’re just some prole in the audience. But Serrano isn’t the first comedian to fall into this trap. It’s a small niggle, but you can’t un-notice it, rather like you can’t unsee the gross image they conjured up describing a particular sex act in eye-watering detail. It’s a shame that might be the takeaway from the show for some people… or some might dash home to try it.

With stage presence, charm, energy and vulnerability to spare, what Serrano needs to do next is make the campaigning secondary and generate more stand-up material (or get cast in some serious television).  

They’ve been the most like a comedian in their delivery that I’ve seen so far at this Fringe – not a storyteller, not a confessional, not a therapeutic hour – but an actual stand-up. 

However, the material needs to catch up and develop a greater range, because, at the moment, it’s repetitive. That may be getting Serrano’s message across, but the audience were already on-side by choosing the show.

Review date: 11 Aug 2026
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Reviewed at: Stand 3 and 4