Apple’s ‘Trying’ Closes Out Another Superb Season (and Belongs on Your Summer Watchlist)

Crafting the perfect TV family can be tricky. Most thrive off dysfunction — everything from “Arrested Development” to its genre-bent counterpart “Succession” — while many focus instead on found family among friends, coworkers, or community (“New Girl,” “Parks and Recreation,” literally “Community”). At least one on-air drama is about the perils of inbreeding and bad communication between loved ones, so we wouldn’t exactly call it a family show.

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In classic sitcoms starting with “Leave it to Beaver,” there was the idea of the model family (passed down so overtly as to inspire a “Boy Meets World” episode literally called “Model Family” that explicitly sites the Cleavers). From “Family Ties” to “Full House” to “Sister Sister,” the nuclear family was the beating heart of a TV show, with a kind of wholesome chemistry and dynamic that sometimes feels lost now.

But like every TV genre, the family comedy is alive, thriving, and evolving — perhaps nowhere as brilliantly as Apple’s “Trying,” which concluded its fourth season on July 3. With thirty minute episodes and eight per season, the show is not only an easy to binge but delightful one, and it deserves more love than most of what gets streamed to oblivion these days.

“Trying’ is a beautiful example of a TV show that goes above and beyond the pitch — and the pitch is no slouch to begin with. Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) are a loving, stable couple in their 30s who are ready to have children, but with one curve ball after another they end up pursuing adoption, then foster care, then custody; countless twists that raise and dash their hopes every day while they fervently wish to share their love.

Season 1 is a crash course in the adoption process (creator Andy Wolton is an adoptee bringing his own experience of the system), illuminating the rigor and turmoil of bureaucracy surrounding parenthood that simply don’t exist for those doing it biologically. Dreams of a baby quickly become dreams of a child, and the goal of adoption takes a backseat to fostering. Once the kids Princess (Eden Togwell) and Tyler (Mickey McAnulty) come into the picture, Nikki and Jason’s mission is to create a life with them that feels as complete and loving as if they were all together from the kids’ infancy.

As I revisited earlier episodes of “Trying” for this article, I looked at it very differently than when I started the show in 2021. Back then I was in the midst of the expected laundry list of friend weddings (I still am) and appreciative of “Trying”s themes, but still disconnected. Since then, my Instagram feed — like so many others — has transformed seemingly overnight to a baby parade. I get ads for egg freezing and know people who have started the process. Friends who couldn’t imagine having children a few years ago are reevaluating their decisions, at least one has become a foster parent, and even though nothing in my life is conducive to raising a whole human, I walk around with a ticking clock in me just like anyone with a uterus, and it’s getting louder.

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All this is to say that “Trying” didn’t undertake this story halfheartedly. No matter where you are in life or your relationship to parenthood, the series depicts Nikki and Jason’s rollercoaster with extraordinary empathy for both of them as well a handful of loved ones on different paths. Their quest to be parents is never boiled down to biological predisposition or timing or peer pressure, but to a genuine desire to offer care and provide a safe, loving home for someone else. The title starts as a play on conception and then zooms out to encompass every vast effort that Nikki and Jason put into their relationship, their children, and the life they’ve built together.

Season 4 takes the creative risk of jumping forward six years in time (the cold open is a fun reorientation) and integrates Cooper Turner and Scarlett Rayner as older version of kids Tyler and Princess — the latter of whom is a full-fledged teen with a growling list of questions about her birth mother. As healthy as her home life is with Nikki and Jason (Smith and Spall are now dating in real life and expecting a child of their own), Princess has questions about where she came from and why her mother left (in a heartbreaking scene, she’s noticeably crestfallen when someone describes the nightmare of raising a five-year-old, revealing that Tyler was five when they joined the foster system). In her GCSE year, she wants to interrogate the past so she can confidently enter the future.

The other storylines are equally heartwarming; Jason starts coaching a soccer team for Tyler and other adoptees in his age group, his father tries to reenter the dating pool in his late-70s (leading to a lot of morbid humor from an always magnificent Phil Davis, like when he buys a whole date night outfit in Jason’s sizes because they’ll pass to him one day), and Nikki’s eccentric brother-in-law Scott (Darren Boyd) decides to row the Atlantic out of commitment to his daughter’s environmental future. The cast’s comfortable rapport and finely-tuned writing makes even the most outlandish of these storylines sing on page and screen, including a bottle episode in Mallorca and gaspworthy finale cliffhanger.

Whether you’ve got a long weekend, lazy day, or just need a feel-good binge immediately, “Trying” is the answer, and a gift that keeps on giving. Loving it is effortless, and it’s the rare show that truly feels like it loves you back.

“Trying” is now streaming on Apple TV+.