(courtesy IMP Awards)
SEASON 3
Finding a perfect TV or streaming series is surely up their with pink glitter-smattered uniforms or the ideal boss, a thing of myth and legend that many a Reddit chat or Twitter (now X) thread has long and noisily ruminated on.
But as you watch season three of quite simply the best British show to come out since Ted Lasso – technically they premiered at roughly around at the same time but this reviewer didn’t discover it until earlier this year (blame the sheer mass of shows around at the moment) – you can’t help but feel that Trying might be well that show that comes as close to perfection as it’s possible to get.
So, what about this show, created and written by Andy Wolton, deserves such a gloriously sweeping top-of-the-pedestal accolade?
Well, for starters, what about a near-faultlessly executed premise?
If you have watched series one and series two of Trying, you will be well aware ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- that after overcoming all kinds of obstacles to be considered as adoptive parents, Nikki Newman (Esther Smith) and Jason Ross (Rafe Spall) were finally given the big tick of approval and are given Princess (Eden Togwell) to foster, with her brother Tyler (mickey McAnulty) surreptitiously and against all regulations and rules, coming along for the ride too.
Success at last! And yes, while Nikki and Jason are buoyantly happy to have realised their long held parenting dream, it comes at the end of a very long process which Trying did a beautiful job of portraying in all its highs and lows, a quality of honest storytelling, albeit it with some reality-defying fairytale flourishes, which it continues into a wondrously good third season.
In this third outing, Nikki and Jason have now moved beyond the will-they-won’t-they be able to foster/adopt to yes they can, and after a hiccup at the start where it looks like Tyler might be taken away from his beloved sister, the two get to stay with their new adoptive parents and the four of them can finally be a happy family.
But, of course, reality meeting hopefulness is never quite that neat and tidy, and while Trying does throw happy little moments of triumph in there more than the average show, the reality is that surmounting all the challenges of new, sudden parenthood can be tough.
How do you throw the perfect birthday parent for your new son when you haven’t done one before? Is it easy or hard to bond with your kids and if that’s lagging, how do you make it happen? (Watching dear sweet Nikki try to bond with Princess is sweetly moving.) And when someone from the kids’ birth family throws some pretty serious barriers to happy ever after down, how do you navigate that all while trying to hang onto your flat which might be sold out from under you?
That’s just a sampler of what Jason and Nikki have to face but to its credit, Trying sticks the landing on just about every front, handling the issues it raises with truth and honesty while at the same giving us the happy ever after we want our favourite Camden Town, London family to have in bountiful, longlasting spades.
It’s funny, sad, searing, scary and ultimately uplifting, holding a raft of story threads and emotions deftly in place and letting them land at just the right moment so neither the seriousness nor the quirky nor the gooey-soft fairytale warm-and-fuzzies ever run the risk of undercutting each other.
It helps, of course, that the casting is pitch-perfect.
Smith and Spall, now a couple off-screen as well as on, bring real, naturalistic chemistry to their performances, backed by an accomplished ensemble cast of family and friends who shine in their respective moments – most notably in episode 1 “Home” where Jason’s dad Vic (Phil Davis) is not going to let Tyler get taken away without a fight and episode 8 “The End of the Beginning” where going to court to see if they adopt Princess and Tyler, in the face of some stiff opposition, becomes a big, noisy, found-family affair.
Trying uses its masterful writing and sublimely good performances, and its ability to be both quirky and seriously thoughtful to absolutely impactful effect, serving up feel-good TV with grunt and emotional honesty that never puts a foot wrong and which leaves you feeling elevated and alive in ways that stick around long after the credits on the final episode roll.
Season three streams on AppleTV+
SEASON 4
Welcome to the fourth season of Trying and with it, a six-year, narrative-bolstering time jump which places Nikki and Jason squarely into teenager territory.
While Princess and Tyler, played now by Scarlett Rayner and Cooper Turner respectively, aren’t the worst of kids – as rebellion goes, they are way down on the scale, their actions more naughty than nasty; after all, this is not that kind of show – they do have issues big enough that it keeps the plot cog turning merrily away and plunges Nikki and Jason, now far more assured parents, right into the thick of things.
Driving things to a large degree this time is Princess’s search for her mother, an understandable imperative that we all knew would surface sooner or later, but Trying being Trying, it takes the form of some very quirky, funny but ultimately emotional impactful acting out.
In “Road Trip”, for instance, Nikki, at a loose end after her mother, Jilly (Marian McLoughlin) cancels their plans because the cat is on her lap and it’d be a shame to wake it, accidentally joins Princess’s trip to find her mum in Brighton, aided and abetted, though with some discomfort at the deception, by Nikki’s sister Karen (Siân Brooke).
Ostensibly undertaking the 100km trip from London to buy a table to upcycle, Princess is, of course, trying to track down her mum to her last known address, her quest driven in part, it should be pointed out by the fact that her biological grandmother, Bev (Clare Higgins) ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- has died – the first episode has some “fun” with getting the audience to guess who’s died, something they do in the final episode “Scott of the Atlantic” – and it’s all supposed to be done in quiet so Nikki doesn’t get upset.
Which she does, at first, when she finds out the truth, but once the cat is very much out of the bag, it’s Nikki, whose actions at the end of the “Road Trip” are both hysterically funny and speak to how deeply and completely she loves her adopted daughter – who does much of the running on finding Princess and Tyler’s mum, Cat Reid (Charlotte Riley) especially in “Airport Run” and “White Lies” which is often farcically silly and actually quite sweet.
While the Princess searches for her mum story gives Nikki, Jason and the accomplished ensemble cast a chance to be play to their idiosyncratically humourous strengths, it also shines a light on what it is like for adopted kids, loved and enveloped in family as they might be, and Tyler and Princess are LOVED and HAPPY in season four, and provides for some truly emotional intimate moments, especially between mother and daughter.
While Princess is desperate to find her mum, even to the point of neglecting her studies (“White Lies” gives another chance for her family to do their daffy, supportive best), Tyler remains relatively low key happy and weird; not weird enough to have a red lamp for a best friend in season three, but enough to be part of a soccer team of adoptees where he is, at heart, the sweetest, if cutely oddest, kid around.
To be fair, he doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but Trying uses him well, such as when his soccer team mates are absolute brats to the host at the panic room Jason hopes will bond them as a group, and after they’ve gone on their noisy way, Tyler simply utters a very sweet and earnest “thank you”.
He might be a little strange but he’s, at heart, a good kid and while the fourth season gives the lion share of time to Princess, Tyler’s moments are judiciously placed and lovely and speak to how well he and his sister and Nikki and Jason have formed a rather lovely, if occasionally but typically dysfunctional family.
Much of the fun of a Trying season is watching as the extended network of family and friends do their comically oddball but emotional well meaning thing.
In this season that means showing Nikki’s parents, who are quiet and self-effacing and maybe a tad more eccentric than you might have supposed – Jilly, it turns out, likes the more interventionist side of spa treatment while John (Roderick Smith) is a temperamental painter with moods – and Scott (Darren Boyd), desperate to be a good dad to Stevie (Matilda Flower) on whom he dotes (another product of the time jump – instant kindergartner!), committing to rowing across the Atlantic with the help of Freddy (Oliver Chris) who really doesn’t have a lot to do this season.
But perhaps the most fun by the ensemble cast is had by Jason’s dad Vic (Phil Davis) who has ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- lost his wife some two years earlier and who is well and truly coming out as quite a quirky character who is way better at fixing things than being with people, and who is devoted to his grandkids.
He is not only fun to watch as stumbles into the world of septuagenerian dating, but heartfelt too as he and Jason, at one point, do their best to say “I love you” without actually uttering the words.
As character arcs go, his is one of the best, and speaks to the way in which Trying has always been very good at taking the time to realise the full extent of its characters’ potentials and then integrating that into storylines that are heartwarming, emotionally honest and downright funny, a dynamic that is wonderfully continued in season four and has you desperately hoping that a fifth season is in the offing.
Season four streams on AppleTV+
Behind the scenes …