‘Trying’ Is Still Apple TV's Best Comedy of All Time With Its Season 5 Return | Review

Apple TV’s best sitcom of all time is finally back for Season 5 after a two-year break, and it doesn't take very long for Trying to tackle the cliffhanger it last left off on. Just when Nikki and Jason’s life finally feels a bit more settled in and picture-perfect, Esther Smith and Rafe Spall are asked to take their characters’ warm, wonderfully steady marriage into some messier terrain. Princess (Scarlett Rayner) and Tyler (Cooper Turner)’s biological mother, Kat (Charlotte Riley), shows up and throws their family into a whole new kind of chaos.

As if that wasn’t enough, Nikki also has a charming new co-worker in her life (Colin Morgan), the kind of person who makes you wonder if this marriage is about to hit a really hard bump. Suddenly, the happy life this quintessential couple fought for and that audiences have come to love since Trying's 2020 premiere doesn’t feel quite as simple as it did before. However, that’s what makes the opening stretch of its latest season so exciting and one more example of why the show itself is Apple TV’s sweetest hidden gem. Six years later, the streamer’s laugh-out-loud half-hour series is finally asking some very uncomfortable questions about marriage, parenthood, and whether life ever really stops testing those who’ve found happiness.

What Is ‘Trying’ Season 5 About?

Picking up right where Season 4 left off, with Kat at the front door of Nikki and Jason’s home, the couple is now dealing with an “additional” parent in their daily comings and goings, which leaves plenty of room for an anxious Nikki to spiral. The new dynamic has also created some hostility between Nikki and Princess, who is upset that her adoptive mother kept the truth from her while she visited Kat in Spain during Season 4. Meanwhile, Tyler is less sure how he feels overall about it, leading the couple to try to support their kids’ wishes but also figure out where Kat really fits in their lives.

At the same time, life is pretty much moving forward for everyone. Jason heads back to school after feeling inspired by Penny (Imelda Staunton) to become a social worker, while Nikki starts a new job in the travel industry. Without spoiling the gags that follow, it’s safe to say they both have the kind of first days that only Trying could pull off: awkward, sweet and deeply funny. Meanwhile, Princess and Tyler are growing into teenagers who have their own worries between what to text a crush to party-hopping with friends on Halloween. The season also follows Nikki’s sister Karen (Siân Brooke) as she manages to juggle life with her daughter, Stevie (Matilda Flower), while Scott (Darren Boyd) is still caught up in his latest adventure following last season’s decision — rowing across the Atlantic.

One of Season 5’s most common threads is not so much everyone “trying” to float on by, but that they’re all standing at a crossroads. Nikki and Jason are no longer learning to be good parents, but rather holding onto themselves while raising full-grown teenagers. Across the season, Nikki starts to feel like she’s an outsider, especially as Kat’s return gives Princess so much she can’t offer. It’s this very real fear that gives the season some of its most tender moments, because even when Nikki and Jason are pulled in different directions, the show keeps coming back to how much they still want to find their way back to each other. Never once turning those big soap-opera moments into melodrama, Trying lets Season 5 become a story about learning to live with change without assuming change means something is falling apart.

‘Trying’ Season 5 Is Still One of Apple TV’s Best-Written Shows

One of the things that has made Trying so special is that it understands how funny normal life can be when people who are just doing their best get it slightly wrong. After four seasons, these new episodes lean into that even more, with jokes that don’t feel forced or overly set up. While Nikki and Jason’s first days in their new worlds are absolutely perfect examples of this, so is the couple’s eyebrow-raising trip to Italy, or Nikki and Karen’s dad, John (Roderick Smith), not knowing how to operate state-of-the-art kitchen cabinets while visiting his eldest daughter. The humor comes from how awkward, exposed, and out of place everyone can often feel. Yet Trying never laughs at them; it laughs with them, which has always been part of its charm, and the show trusts its audience to find those moments just as rewarding as the bigger ones.

Season 5 also has a knack for making the smallest moments feel huge. Between a text message, a bad assumption, or withholding information, Trying turns all of it into something funny and tender at the same time. Even Nikki meeting (and crushing on) Kerry works because the show never treats it like some cheap twist. Instead, it uses her charming colleague to explore something very interesting about Nikki and Jason’s marriage, which showrunner and creator Andy Wolton handles with remarkably mature writing even when the triangle leads to some shocking revelations. More than anything, Trying Season 5 still understands something many comedies forget: people don’t stop growing once they get their happy ending. They just face different challenges.

The ‘Trying’ Cast Is as Lovable as Ever in Season 5

Image via Apple TV

Smith and Spall have always been the heart of Trying, but Season 5 gives them a slightly different challenge this time around. Nikki and Jason are still very funny, warm, and wonderfully chaotic, but the show's leading duo now has to play them as people who are more settled in and somehow less sure of themselves at the same time. Smith is especially good at letting Nikki’s anxiety creep in without making her feel irrational, grounding every spiral in something painfully human and completely understandable. Meanwhile, Spall continues to make Jason’s kindness feel easy and instinctive. He can get a laugh with one confused look, then turn around and make a quiet parenting moment feel completely sincere.

Rayner also gets some of her strongest material yet as Princess, and carries it beautifully. Princess is at the heart of the season, consistently in search of answers she has wanted her whole life, which gives her story even more weight when you think back to Nikki and Jason first finding her in Season 2. Rayner plays her as older and sharper, but never too grown-up. There is a real vulnerability underneath the anger Princess feels toward the adults, especially as she tries to work out what her biological mother’s return means for her and for the family she already has.

Around the trio is Turner, who also brings a lovely awkwardness to Tyler, especially as the character tries to navigate first love. Joining the young actor are Brooke and Boyd, whose performances continue to make Karen and Scott’s chaos feel strangely touching. Also along for the ride this season is Morgan, who fits in quite well as Kerry, bringing just enough charm to make his place in Nikki’s life believable without flattening him into a simple plot device. We'd be remiss not to mention the striking turns from Celia Imrie and Gbemisola Ikumelo in guest-starring roles as a hoarder and social worker, respectively, that smartly tie to Jason’s new path. It’s small yet impactful and heartfelt, giving Season 5 another lovely reminder of how far Nikki and Jason have come since the early days of trying to become parents.

By the time the credits roll, Trying will once again leave you wishing you could spend a little more time with this family (those eight episodes made available for review were not enough). It is also the kind of season that will have you laughing one minute and quietly tearing up the next, tugging at your heartstrings in the gentle, non-showy way that the show has always done best. Five seasons in, Trying remains one of the best-written, best-acted, and most emotionally rewarding comedies on television.

Trying Season 5 premieres with new episodes starting Wednesday on Apple TV.

Release Date 2020 - 2023

Network Apple TV

Directors Ollie Parsons, Ellie Heydon, Elliot Hegarty, Jim O'Hanlon

Writers Andy Wolton, Oriane Messina, James Wood, Fay Rusling

Pros & Cons

• Esther Smith and Rafe Spall deliver another deeply lovable, lived-in performance as TV's most comforting couple.
• Andy Wolton's writing finds huge emotional payoffs in life's smallest, funniest, and most relatable moments.
• Scarlett Rayner shines as Princess in the show's most emotionally rewarding storyline yet.
• The Kerry storyline adds real tension without turning the season into cheap relationship drama.