The most heartwarming show on TV kept me up bingeing until 2am

There’s nothing I love better than a British TV show that combines laughs, cries and stakes that are low but feel absurdly high.

The art of the serious sitcom is a fine balance, blending warm humour and dry wit through endearing characters.

Shows like Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, and Sharon Horgan’s Catastrophe are the crème de la crème, and after watching season 5 of the Apple TV show Trying, I believe it’s up there too.

When long-term couple Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) face fertility troubles, they turn to adoption and enter an eye-opening world as they start to build their found family.

The first few seasons track the difficult, lengthy, but ultimately triumphant process of adopting their children, Princess and Tyler.

In season four, there’s a huge time jump where we see Princess and Tyler as older children and the family of four, in all its chaotic glory, is well established.

I’ll be the first to admit that the sudden change in storyline from the struggles of growing their family to the trials and tribulations of raising children in an unconventional set-up was more than jarring.

The fourth outing was by far the rockiest, as we got used to the new actors playing Princess and Tyler (no longer rosy-cheeked kids but rather aloof teens) and the colossal shift in dynamic in our happy couple’s household.

It’s why I’m pleased to say that season five is a return to form. In fact, when I clicked play on the first episode, I had every intention of savouring the experience over several days.

Instead, I found myself in bed at 2am, smiling stupidly at my laptop screen as the credits rolled on the eighth and final episode.

The new season picks up where the last left off, with Nikki’s secret about connecting with Princess and Tyler’s biological mother, Kat (Charlotte Riley), throwing an emotional grenade into the household.

A vast majority of the new episodes explore this tenacious new connection, the havoc it wreaks on their ragtag unit and Nikki’s existential crisis about motherhood.

This fire is fuelled by the raging hormones of a 17-year-old girl on the brink of adulthood (we’ve all been there, it’s nuts), whose family home has been turned upside down.

There’s also an eyebrow-raising subplot at Nikki’s new workplace involving the inimitable Colin Morgan as her office crush, which reaches an utterly bonkers conclusion.

Meanwhile, Jason is re-entering education to become a social worker and has to confront being the old crony among a group of Gen Zers, which goes about as well as you’d expect.

Elsewhere, Sian Brooke and Darren Boyd are back as Karen and Scott, the husband-and-wife duo so terribly suited for each other that it somehow works perfectly.

At the start of season five, Scott is off on his Atlantic-rowing adventure to find meaning and purpose in his life while Karen holds the fort at home.

One of the best episodes of the season leans fully into the absurd comedy of it all, while still somehow tugging on your heartstrings.

Although there is a lot to love, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with some shaky moments slipping through the cracks. Like when Jason is attending classes, there are times when the humour and dialogue veer into cringeworthy and predictable, but these stumbles are few and far between.

There are also several occasions in the new episodes when Nikki causes me to groan audibly, but I’ve come to accept that she’ll never quite be my cup of tea. In a TV show filled with colourful characters, you’ll inevitably find someone annoying.

All in all, I would very happily watch many more seasons of this bric-a-brac family trying to figure out what makes a house a home.

Trying seasons one to four are available to stream on Apple TV Plus now. The first episode of season five is out now. New episodes air every Wednesday.