Now Is the Time to Give Apple TV+'s 'Trying' a Try

Is there a more charming TV series than Trying? For 24 episodes, the AppleTV+ comedy has followed Jason (Rafe Spall) and Nikki (Esther Smith) on their journey to become parents. It all culminated in the third season finale when they formally adopted Princess and her younger brother Tyler.

For its fourth season, which premieres with two episodes on May 23, the series leaps forward six years, making Princess (Scarlett Rayner) and Tyler (Cooper Turner) now 16 and 12, respectively. The show skips over Princess’s tween years and lands her right when she’s the most curious about her birth mother and why she and her brother were given up for adoption when Princess was only five years old.

Nikki lives with the constant low-key fear that Kat, Princess and Tyler’s birth mom, will return. Maybe at Christmas or a birthday. Maybe at a significant family event (the premiere episode begins with a funeral). “If Kat didn’t come back today, she’s never coming back. I think we can afford to relax a little bit now,” Jason tells her. But Nikki’s fears are not quelled. “It’s been six years. I’m still so scared of losing them,” Nikki says. What Nikki hasn’t considered is that Princess may have questions Nikki is unable to answer. That even if Kat doesn’t come looking for her children, her children may come looking for her. (Anyone who has ever watched a TV show can probably guess whether or not viewers will meet Kat this season).

Time jumps don’t always work for a TV series (looking at you, The Affair and Once Upon a Time). But, in this case, it was an extraordinarily smart move to age up the children. The fast-forward provides all characters with so much more dramatic fodder, and Rayner and Turner, who join the series this season, are up to the task. Princess has reached that stage of adolescence where much of what her parents do is so annoying. The way Nikki drinks tea, for example, is “performative” and “unnecessary.” 

Nikki’s Type A sister Karen (the utterly terrific Sian Brooke) becomes an unlikely confidant for Princess. Princess doesn’t want to talk to her mom because she will be too upset. “She always is,” Karen deadpans. “You just have to tune it out. Like living next to a busy road.”

While Princess is on a quest to find her birth mother, Jason is on a quest to provide Tyler with a football team where Tyler can be an active member of the team. When Tyler’s current coach tells Jason he was hoping to separate the less coordinated children, Jason responds, “We’ve already separated the less coordinated ones into a group. We call it ‘children.’” While Tyler’s storyline doesn’t get the same amount of screen time as Princess’s, and while his stakes aren’t nearly as high, the juxtaposition of raising children at very different stages of development is handled with a graceful deft.

Series creator, executive producer, and writer Andy Wolton’s ability to hone in on universal parenting moments and find the inherent humor is the true genius of Trying. Jason asks Nikki when she last did something for herself without the kids. She replies, with no irony, that she recently had a mammogram. I remember going to a dentist appointment a few months after my first child was born and finding the whole experience so relaxing. The dentist may have even found a cavity. But still, no one needed anything from me. It was so peaceful. It’s that sweet spot of the humor and truth about parenting that Trying gets precisely right. 

This season also explores how Nikki and Jason’s marriage has changed since they became parents. The struggle of making time for yourselves as a couple when raising children is all-consuming. “We need to go out somewhere where we are actual people that we remember to see. I’m not just background music,” Nikki tells Jason.

In addition to the terrific main story of this family of four, the series thrives because of its supporting characters. Karen may be a parent to five-year-old Stevie, but she treats Stevie as her equal, bringing her to funerals and forwarding her articles on supply chain cross-contamination. Karen’s husband Scott’s (a droll Darren Boyd) midlife crisis makes him decide to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a row boat. “I’ve done very little with the time I’ve been given,” he tells his wife. No matter that he doesn’t know how to row a boat or how to swim. There’s Jason’s dad, Vic (Phil Davis), who thinks a way to a woman’s heart might be via home repair. These well-developed and delightful characters pepper Nikki and Jason’s world, adding comic relief and compelling secondary storylines.

If you haven’t already, now is the time to give Trying a try. The first two episodes of Season 2 stream on Wednesday, May 22, 2024, with one a week to follow through mid-July.