Please try Trying! Go on, I promise you the tender comedy, starring Esther Smith and Rafe Spall, is the greatest comedy no one is watching (well not enough people are!).
Perhaps that's because it’s on Apple TV Plus. The service is best known for being home to Ted Lasso, and I’d wager lots of viewers don’t know what else is available on the service (which is a separate injustice I won’t complain about here). And whilst Ted Lasso certainly deserves praise, to me Trying is on another level.
Trying was Apple’s first-ever British scripted original, and is easily one of the best Apple TV Plus shows you can watch right now. This delightful, down-to-earth comedy revolves around two would-be parents who are desperate to have a child of their own. Sadly, Nikki and Jason (Esther Smith and Rafe Spall) aren’t able to conceive. Minutes into the pilot, they learn that another round of IVF treatment is unlikely to be successful (and they couldn’t reasonably afford it anyway).
That might not sound like the setup for a new comedy — and some viewers may well struggle with the premise, depending on how close to home it hits — but stick with me, as the show is equal parts deep and meaningful and laugh-out-loud funny. Faced with this new knowledge, the pair started exploring adoption as an alternative path to starting a family.
What follows is a heartwarming journey that sees them confronting the long, winding path to realizing their dreams. Creator Andy Wolton has crafted a show that manages to find the funny side to every one of the bumps in the road and relatable situations for practically any viewer.
The jewel in Trying’s crown is the on-screen chemistry between our two leads. Nikki is anxious but approaches everything with boundless enthusiasm, whilst Jason perfectly balances her out with his sarcastic, laid-back approach to life.
They’re not perfect and certainly get into plenty of scrapes along the way, but you never doubt whether they love each other an awful lot. If you fall for the show like I did, it soon becomes impossible not to root for them every step of the way.
Their memorable performances are supported by an equally excellent supporting cast that includes stars like Oliver Chris (Jason’s outspoken best mate, Freddy), Sian Brooke (Nikki’s tightly-wound sister, Karen), Darren Boyd (Karen’s insufferably pretentious boyfriend, Scott), and Imelda Staunton as the couple’s hilarious social worker, Penny.
What impresses me the most about Trying, besides its stellar cast, is that the show never actually makes light of its premise. The well-written script always feels sensitive to the personal issues at hand; it’s not about exploiting the emotional situation for laughs, but about poking fun at all the many, many absurdities that come not only with the adoption process but with daily life.
In the pilot alone, you’ll see our lead couple wrestling with their sad news. But after a brief time skip nine months into the future, Nikki and Jason also skewer the atmosphere of awkward parenting chatter at a baby shower, mock ridiculous parenting trends and ugly babies, moan about their more successful friends, and joke about getting older and their changing relationship dynamics. Though if there’s a lesson you can learn early on from Trying, it’s not to describe sleeping with your partner like Jason does; saying it's like "watching your favorite film" so you’re no longer on the edge of your seat with excitement probably won’t go down too well!
Trying is bright, optimistic, and out-and-out fun, and it deserves way more attention than it has gotten so far. Now if we just get a hint about when season 4 might hit our screens, that would be great…
