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?”
