Apple’s quietly beloved comedy Trying is back. The fifth season premiere is now streaming on Apple TV, and fans who waited since the fourth season wrapped in July 2024 finally have new episodes to work through — one per week, dropping every Wednesday through August 26.
For the uninitiated, Trying debuted in 2020 without much noise and steadily built a devoted following. It stars Esther Smith (Hold Your Breath) and Rafe Spall (Shaun of the Dead) as Nikki and Jason, a couple whose journey through the messy realities of parenthood has always leaned more heartfelt than saccharine.
Season five throws a spanner into their hard-won stability. Nikki and Jason are forced to reckon with the fallout when Kat (Charlotte Riley), the biological mother of Princess and Tyler, shows up at their door. As Apple TV frames it, her arrival brings a “whirlwind of chaos” into a family that had, until now, settled into something resembling calm.
The supporting cast is stacked with recognizable British talent:
- Darren Boyd (Down Cemetery Road)
- Siân Brooke (Blue Lights)
- Celia Imrie (The Thursday Murder Club)
- Phil Davis (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
- Gbemisola Ikumelo (Black Ops)
- Colin Morgan (Belfast)
The weekly release model is classic Apple TV strategy — the same drip-feed approach that turned shows like Severance and Silo into water-cooler fixtures. It keeps the conversation alive and gives each episode room to breathe, which suits Trying‘s character-driven pacing well.
To watch, you’ll need an Apple TV subscription, which runs $12.99 per month or comes bundled into Apple One. Beyond Trying, the service’s catalog leans on prestige hits including Severance, The Studio, The Morning Show, and Shrinking — a lineup that has cemented Apple’s reputation for quality over quantity.
If the previous four seasons are any guide, Trying‘s fifth outing will keep doing what it does best: mining warmth and comedy from life’s genuinely difficult moments. Kat’s return promises to test everything Nikki and Jason have built, and there are enough episodes ahead to let that tension play out properly.
