If the pivot to streaming services is going to atomize television into a zillion little bijou programs with 30,000 viewers apiece, let them be as funny and diverting as In the Know. The first original adult animated series to run on Peacock, the show, which premiered this week, is willfully, aggressively niche: a send-up of NPR and the chamomile-infusion-sipping beta cucks who work in public radio.
Its protagonist is a male veteran radio host named Lauren Caspian, voiced by Silicon Valley star Zach Woods, who co-created the show with Beavis and Butt-Head overlord Mike Judge (also of Silicon Valley), Greg Daniels (of The Office), and Brandon Gardner (of Upright Citizens Brigade). Lauren is a sentient virtue signal who insists on calling homeless people “unhoused,” boasts that he “was using the term Inuit in the 90s,” and is so acutely upper-middlebrow that he has no idea who Jennifer Lopez is, telling a guest, “I’m not familiar. Is she a victim of wage theft?”
Relentless and layered as the show’s own-the-libs jokes are—among its workplace sight gags are a lactation station and a row of rigorously specific recycling bins—they come from a place of affection rather than Greg Gutfeldian contempt. Lauren, whose hair frizzes skyward like Ira Glass’s, may be a boob, but, like Homer Simpson, the granddaddy of adult-animation protagonists, he’s a boob you root for.
Woods, pitching his voice upward and nerd-ward, is terrific as the narcissistic but insecure Lauren, engaging in self-satisfied banter with the program’s many guest stars, among them Ken Burns, Roxane Gay, Kaia Gerber, and Norah Jones, who beam in as themselves (not as animations) via videoconference.
Also especially good in the ensemble cast are J. Smith-Cameron as Barb, Lauren’s overly conciliatory executive producer, and the comedian and actress Caitlin Reilly as Fabian, the station’s in-house scold and policer of language. (We see her casually knitting an ACAB onesie.) Judge appears in a smaller role as Sandy, a superannuated boomer culture critic who makes dated references to Dick Gregory and the 1974 caper comedy Freebie and the Bean. (Again, aggressively niche.)
Perhaps the most inviting aspect of In the Know is its look. Filmed in stop-motion by ShadowMachine, the animation shop behind, among other triumphs, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the show is gorgeously realized and vividly three-dimensional, with every stitch visible in the nubby wool sweaters inevitably worn by most of the characters. The softness suits the material, which wouldn’t work in gonzo Rick and Morty style or the ziggety-zaggety lines of Hazbin Hotel.
Is In the Know a landmark in the annals of animation akin to Beavis and Butt-Head or The Simpsons? No. But if you’re in that select demographic of people who signed up for a Peacock subscription in order to watch that Chiefs-Dolphins playoff game and who are fluent in the work of Scott Simon and Terry Gross, cancel your plans, put on the kettle, and settle in—you have six episodes of rooibos-steeped delightfulness to enjoy.
In the Know is available for streaming on Peacock
David Kamp is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL and the author of several books, including Sunny Days: The Children’s Television Revolution That Changed America
