(courtesy IMP awards)
Season 1
If you have met the love of your life, and here’s hoping that’s the case, you will be well acquainted with that delicious feeling you had way back when when they were chattering away and you knew, you just KNEW, that they were The One for you and you couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
It’s a glorious feeling and in many ways, it’s precisely how you feel watching Trying, a wholly delightful British series which debuted in 2020 which, despite releasing a months ahead of more well-known streaming sibling, is eminently well-suited to filling that big Ted Lasso-sized hole in your viewing heart.
Like its better-known stablemate, which sadly finished after just three seasons in 2023, Trying beautifully balances the serious and the silly in life, linking the two elements with a healthy dose of very grounded romance courtesy of the show’s two hugely likable and very protagonists, Jason Ross (Rafe Spall) and Nikki Newman (Esther Smith).
It is fact the gorgeously warm and funny relationship between Spall and Smith, who are now together in real life as on screen, that gives Trying such a rich, warm and moving emotional centre.
No matter what happens to the couple and over the course of the first eight episodes that comprise season one, they are put through the wringer and then some, they somehow manage to find their way back to, not just each other, but to what drives and sustains their relationship and how, regardless of what comes against them, they are home for each other.
That’s key to this series because the title refers to the stress and strain these two early-thirties people undergo when first natural conception and IVF fails them, and they decided to adopt a child, initially because it will fill a hole in their collective soul, but later because they come to realise, after a rigorous round of vetting, what they give to a child should they be approved to adopt.
Everything about them is suddenly on the table, and if it weren’t for how close they are and how much they LIKE as well as LOVE each other, they likely would’ve buckled under the pressure of all the scrutiny that’s applied to anyone who puts their hand up to take on a child escaping what their case worker, Penny (Imelda Staunton) refers to as “warzones”.
The really affecting part of Trying, which keeps them winningly grounded throughout, is how it manages to be both mischievously funny but heartfelt.
They are strangely competing elements and not every show that employs them keeps them well in sync, but Trying does, giving us the hilarity of Nikki tossing someone’s phone in a pond when she angrily thinks they are prioritising digital life over their nearby kids – spoiler alert: the kids don’t belong to them – or Penny being refreshingly honest about her life (oversharing much?) while then segueing into Jason having a long dark, night of the soul when he questions if he’s got what it takes to be a dad.
At no point do you feel like either part of the show’s storytelling DNA is cannibalising or lessening the impact of the other, and much of the charm of the series comes from the way it reflects life which can be laugh-out-loud funny one moment, and distressingly sad or annoying the next.
Trying dances between the two with affecting alacrity, and while there is a very Richard Curtis-ish fairytale feel to proceedings, it also feels so real and true to life that it also feels very authentic and accessible; as a result, you fall in love, and you fall hard, not just because Jason and Nikki are so damn normal and loveable but because the life they lead, and their quest to have a child through adoption, feels like movingly real.
You want these two people, who are far from perfect and need to fix quite a number of things in themselves and their lives – at one point they do write a list of deficiencies they need to correct to improve their chances of being approved the borough’s panel to adopt and it’s fate is funny and alarming in equal measure – to get everything their would-be parents hearts desire, and much of Trying is devoted to getting them to that point.
Or at least, to the starting line where parenthood is less a distant dream than a real option.
Full of brilliantly sharp, clever, heartfelt and funny writing, and pitch-perfect performances, Trying season one manages to be both fearfully dramatic and gloriously funny all while being so real and true to life that while it wraps in cosy blanket of storytelling lovability, it is unflinchingly honest about how hard it is to convert hearts’ desires into real life while acting as a love letter to how the power of true love and fundamental connection is the key to get across that far off and much wished for finish line.
Trying season one is currently streaming on AppleTV+
Season 2
As we enter season 2, we’re confronted with the tantalisingly exciting but also excruciating fact that Jason and Nikki are now approved to adopt, thanks to the enthusiastically disenchanted but earnest of their case worker Penny (Imelda Staunton who is beyond superb), but still need to find a kid to call their own.
So, the justified excitement at the end of season one is now tempered by the fact that while a whole world of adoptive parenting responsibility awaits them, that they have a huge hurdle to overcome – finding their new son or daughter.
It’s exciting and exhausting all at once, and as we join the delightful Jason and Nikki who continue to be a steadfast couple who may not always be okay but as Nikki remarks at one point, will be okay eventually because they always are, aren’t they?
It’s a good thing this loveliest but most grounded of couples are possessed of such elastic recoverability because a lot happens to them in this season, and to the people around them, in a series which is undeniably funny – the combination of witty, clever dialogue and Spall and Smith’s chemistry makes their scenes on screen, and there are happily a lot of them, a genuinely flawless delight – but which never shies away from ripping its heart, and by extension, our hearts, open at will.
The main game in town, which is far from being that light and escapist, is finding that precious child to adopt, and on two key occasions, Nikki and Jason come agonisingly close only to be pipped at the post by prospective parents who are faster to express interest in a child online or who have greater means to look after the children.
First up is seven-year-old James, seen only in a photo, who the couple fall in love with near instantly se appearance reveals that while Nikki wants a girl, Jason wants a boy, and it’s all because in typically open, honest and heartwarming Trying fashion, neither one feels confident raising someone of the opposing gender.
Trying of course has a bundle of insightfully thoughtful fun with this great gap between genders, never more so than ———- SPOILERS AHEAD !!!!! ——– at the wedding at the end of the season where Nikki’s cranky but emotionally raw teacher sister Karen (Sian Brooke) gets married to the idiosyncratically pretentious but it turns out actually sweet and tender Scott (Darren John Boyd).
We see the bridesmaids spending hours getting ready under the characteristically panicked guidance of Nikki – as ever, she doubts herself about everything while is calm almost to a fault at times; they are wholly different but they work beautifully together as all the best couples do – while the men are swimming and relaxing in the spa and getting dressed in mere minutes.
What really makes Trying such a clever joy is that even when it’s having fun with gender stereotypes which, we must remember are stereotypes for a very good reason, it does so in an empathetic fashion that recognises that life is never straightforward and nor are relationships between the genders do see the world differently and act accordingly.
Springboarding off that piece of pithy insight, the second season doesn’t make things easier for anyone and zips when you expect it to zag which makes it one of those rare feel good TV/streaming series which defies expectations and doesn’t just follow the rut of what you think is going to take place.
That happens with Nikki and Jason especially who don’t just magically find the kids of their dreams but who have to work incredibly hard, giving up a lot, getting new management positions so they can afford to have kids and even bringing their prickly families together in a bid to prove their kids will have the village they need to grow up happy and healthy in a cosy web of extended family love.
But even the secondary characters are on the receiving end of narrative ducks and weaves that because they don’t just blindly follow the expected pattern are wonderfully and deeply satisfying as a result.
Karen, for instance, is questioning whether Scott, who’s weird and self-involved and a tad narcissistic is really the one for her, and while ———- SPOILERS AHEAD !!!!! ——– it looks for all the world like she’s going to ditch her husband-to-be for a parent at the school where she teaches, she sticks with Scott in the end who turns about to be surprising in all kinds of of generic plot-defying ways.
Similarly, Freddy and Erica (Oliver Chris and Ophelia Lovibond), now split after the former’s admitted infidelity in season one, look to be heading to a slow-burn reconciliation, but Tryingm while giving us such touching moments of new bonding, refuses to just put out them back again with some agonising twists and turns in the road.
Why? Because that’s life my friends, and while Trying might be all heartwarming togetherness and parenting possibilities, it’s also honest and real about the hurdles that sit between us and our dreams, and so, even as we laugh and sigh at how lovely Jason and Nikki are and how wonderful their life might be with ———- SPOILERS AHEAD !!!!! ——– Princess (Eden Togwell) and maybe even her brother Tyler (Mickey McAnulty), and how their friends and family come alive (biggest reveal? Jason’s prickly mum (Marion McLoughlin) who in one Cornwall-set episode, frees herself from all kinds of pain and boredom), we know the road to that final place that season two happily reaches, won’t be easy.
But, and this is where Trying is a joy, they will reach it and it will be, and it is, as gorgeously satisfying as you could wish for, setting us up in season three for more life truths wrapped in realistic but cosy love, family, friends and longing made real and hope fulfilled in ways that are heard-earned but heartwarmingly lovely (and very, very funny).
Trying season two is currently streaming on AppleTV+