Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Trying’ On Apple TV+, A Comedy About A Couple Who Go Through The Adoption Process

TV has made the adoption process look mostly easy. You lose one of your triplets at birth? Just adopt the baby that comes into the hospital on the same day (We’re looking at you, This Is Us!). Your old maid dies and leaves her kids without parents? Just drive into Harlem in a limo and pick them up (That Diff’rent Strokes intro didn’t age well, did it?). But the process is a lot more complicated than that, and it can be an emotional rollercoaster. At the center of a new Apple TV+ comedy is a British couple who are looking to adopt. Read on for more…

TRYING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of the hip Camden neighborhood in London. A couple in their thirties rides the bus home from a night out, lamenting how tired they are at 10:00 at night.

The Gist: Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) have been trying to have a baby for quite some time with no luck. On that bus, Nikki realizes that her fertility window is closing and she decides that the two of them should have sex right there in their seats. So, in the name of reproduction, the two of them have very public sex.

But they find out from a fertility doctor that the possibility of having a baby, even through IVF, is hopelessly small. If they try it again, they’ll have to pay for the treatment themselves, and that’s prohibitively expensive. “How do we even know she’s a good doctor?” Jason says in desperation. “She’s Asian,” Nikki replies. “We didn’t get the one bad Asian doctor.” Then she laments, “How can I miss something I never had?”

Cut to nine months later. Nikki is holding a baby, but it turns out to be the new child of a friend of her friend Erica (Ophelia Lovibond). Erica and Freddy (Oliver Chris), Nikki and Jason’s couple friends, are about to have their second child. Nikki isn’t exactly in a charitable mood that day; she hopes the guest of honor’s child “doesn’t grow up to be a prick.” When Jason hesitates slightly when she initiates sex, Nikki has a mini-meltdown. When he finds her in their spare bedroom, she tells him she’s ready to consider adoption, something that Jason has been asking her about for months now.

“We’re not rushing into anything,” Jason tells his parents, but then Nikki’s so excited, she buys all sorts of baby stuff. But as most people who go down the adoption road find out, the process isn’t all that easy. They find out that the process to get themselves in the system will take a year all by itself, and all of their lives and family lives will be examined. And the chances that they’ll get a baby instead of an older kid are small. It’s to the point that Nikki has her doubts.

But when Erica’s water breaks during a visit, and Nikki and Jason watch their friends’ daughter at the hospital, Nikki realizes how special kids in general are, and wants in again. But will the to of them be deemed suitable parents?

Our Take: As someone who chose adoption to grow my family, the topic of Trying was particularly of interest to me. Though the adoption process isn’t exactly the same in the UK as it is in the States, my wife and I were eager to see how the emotional wringer of the process would be played out in a comedy. The first episode gave the both of us some positive signs that the process will be taken seriously, even if the conflicts and headaches it causes will be played for laughs.

Adoption is a very personal and intimate process for all involved, including the first parents who are placing their children for adoption. I’m not sure exactly how Nikki and Jason will be approaching adoption, whether they’ll go through whatever the UK’s foster system is or do it privately. But either way, all aspects of a couple’s life are looked into, from home life to mental health to friends and family. It’s not as fraught with pitfalls as popular culture makes it out to be, but it’s still pretty invasive. And that’s before you’re even considered to be available for a placement.

When the reality of what it takes to adopt a child hits Nikki and Jason — especially Nikki —  Trying hits a level of reality that few fictionalized stories of adoption reach. Sure, Smith and Spall have a nice chemistry as a young-ish married couple who still find each other fun and exciting after years of marriage, and without having a crazy life around them, the show wouldn’t work. In real life, Nikki wouldn’t attack a random guy he thinks is ignoring his kids, throw his phone in the pond, then run when she finds out that they’re not his kids. But at least it’s a good way to show she’s ready to be a mom.

We’re looking forward to seeing Nikki and Jason go through this often emotional process. Maybe they’ll balk at the home study or argue over paperwork. Perhaps they’ll come close to a placement and have it fall through, or they’ll meet a birth mother, get close to that person, then have the birth mother change her mind. Any and all of this can happen along the way to adopting a child, and if the show’s creator, Andy Wolton, is truly going to show what the process is like, I hope he hits some of these milestones along the way.

Sex and Skin: Nothing besides some very clothed bus sex between Nikki and Jason.

Parting Shot: Nikki gives her book club book to a homeless person; she doesn’t need it anymore. Jason’s mother Sandra (Paula Wilcox) reads the same Adoption Horror Stories website that got Nikki going at the start of the process. Jason checks his BMI to see if it’s under the requirement. And we see the one baby item that Nikki didn’t return: An overhead lamp with a kid-friendly shade on it.

Sleeper Star: We haven’t seen Imelda Staunton yet; we think she’s playing their scattershot lawyer in the adoption process, but we’re not sure. But we’re also happy to see Lovibond playing a best friend that isn’t awful, unlike the one she played in Feel Good.

Most Pilot-y Line: We get it when one of Nikki’s co-workers assume you get to “pick” a baby or win one act auction, but it was quite another thing when Nikki goes on her shopping spree, brings a leaflet home and tells Jason to look on the last page. “It’s not a catalog!” he shouts. Come on, that feels like a bit of an easy joke by people who should know better.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It feels that Trying is going to try (pun intended) to get the emotional wringer of the adoption process right instead of falling back on TV cliches about it. It also helps that Smith and Spall play a couple that are great together and you want to see get what they’ve been hoping for.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Trying On Apple TV+