Apple TV has earned a reputation as the prestige streaming platform, and that extends to its acclaimed comedy slate. The Studio, starring Seth Rogen as fictional Hollywood production company head Matt Remick, has stolen the spotlight of late, earning rave reviews and a staggering 23 Emmy nominations for its first season last year. It set a new high-water mark for a comedy in its debut run, narrowly beating fellow Apple TV juggernaut Ted Lasso in the process. They’re just two pieces of a catalog packed with laughter, also including critical darlings like Shrinking, Platonic, Stick, The Afterparty, and Your Friends and Neighbors, among others.
Among its oldest and most often overlooked dramedy efforts, however, is Trying. Premiering less than a year after the streamer launched and months before viewers were introduced to Jason Sudeikis‘ beloved football coach, the series has spent four seasons so far following Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall), a couple of thirtysomethings who were dying to have children but struggling to conceive. After jumping through countless hoops and trying to prove they were fit to adopt, including dealing with their questionable friends and family, their dreams finally came true in Season 3, when they formally welcomed Princess (Scarlett Rayner) and Tyler (Cooper Turner) into their world. Season 4 then shook things up by following the family years later as both kids entered their teen years, creating an entirely new set of complications they had to navigate together. Their past is about to catch up with them all, however, with the arrival of Season 5.
Apple TV has shared the official trailer for Trying‘s return, and it welcomes a new member of the family into the fold — Kat (Charlotte Riley), Princess and Tyler’s biological mother. Season 4 ended with Kat showing up at Nikki and Jason’s home after Nikki went to Spain to find her, prompting plenty of questions from both kids and a feeling of dread for their adoptive mom. The footage immediately introduces some humorous complications when the five try to get into an amusement park with a family ticket, though that’s the least of their concerns. Kat starts really bonding with Tyler and especially Princess, making up for lost time with game nights and family outings to the point that Nikki starts to worry her kids will prefer her. At the same time, she and Jason are also starting new jobs, with Nikki working a new early shift that pairs her with a worryingly attractive co-worker and Jason learning to become a social worker by helping out a cranky Celia Imrie. While the whole family goes through changes and navigates insecurities, there’s still a clear love binding them all together.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Who Else Is Behind ‘Trying’ Season 5?
Last seen in The Diplomat Season 3 and The Thursday Murder Club, Imrie is one of several new names boarding the expanded fifth season of Trying, alongside Gbemisola Ikumelo, Colin Morgan, Danielle Vitalis, and Leah Brotherhead. They join other returning stars in the stacked ensemble, like BAFTA Award winner Darren Boyd, BAFTA Award nominee Siân Brooke, and BAFTA Award nominee Phil Davis. Creator Andy Wolton once again wrote and executive produced, having steered the feel-good comedy to an excellent 96% Rotten Tomatoes score across all seasons. Season 5 also boasts one other big addition in Ivor Novello Award-winning Dublin-born artist and producer Orla Gartland, who is behind the soundtrack and will debut new songs across all eight episodes.
Trying Season 5 kicks off on July 8, with new episodes following every Wednesday. Check out the trailer in the player above.
