In the Know Is a Hyperspecific and Thoroughly Funny Parody of Public Radio Egos

In our utterly perplexing television landscape, producers still haven’t discovered what exactly a “streaming hit” should look like, meaning they greenlight incredibly specific projects that we now know they are very willing to dump if it doesn’t set the internet on fire for weeks on end. The downside is that we only get invested in strange new shows with a degree of caution; the benefit is that we get stuff like In the Know.

Peacock’s new adult animated series, created by satire guru Mike Judge, The Office and Silicon Valley’s Zach Woods, and UCB alumnus Brandon Gardner, centers on a nebbish and self-absorbed public radio host, Lauren Caspian (Woods), who infuriates and undermines the meek team behind his mildly-popular talk radio show In the Know.

Clearly, radio host sitcoms are not “niche,” but a parody of the hypocrisies of neoliberal New York NPR personalities—in stop-motion animation form, no less—may be one of the most unique pitches that’s received a six-episode premiere season in recent years. In a much rarer move, In the Know is actually very good, skewering the contradictions of its self-important “nimrods” (the official term given in In the Know’s press notes) with sly, piercing style and eliciting more than a few full-bodied laughs from its niche but uncannily accurate satire.

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When paired with his hypercritical leftist millennial researcher Fabian (Caitlin Reilly), the phased-out and suspected-squatter culture critic Sandy (Judge), or the frat boy intern Chase (Charlie Bushnell), it’s clear Lauren has some stiff competition for being the most erratic and belligerent in the small studio (he still wins by a country mile). Most of Lauren’s ignorant and unfeeling ire lands on his executive producer Barb (Succession’s J. Smith-Cameron) or his long-suffering sound engineer Carl (Carl Tart), whose straight-faced response to cringe-inducing chaos at In the Know hints they might make a very compatible pair in the future—hopefully Peacock is willing to commit to more of Judge/Woods/Gardner’s wit so we can see a relationship (read: something heartwarming and uncynical) blossom.

In the Know reminds us of what we’ve known since pictures first began to move—stop-motion remains very funny. There’s something so humiliating about seeing a character rendered as a slouching, spindly figurine; all the physical tics and habits of a real person feel exaggerated and scrutinized when they’re transplanted to a delicately manipulated model. The way the Lauren puppet frowns, gestures, and holds his limbs even in a neutral position conveys so much about the anxieties and personality defects bubbling up inside him.

The series is animated by studio ShadowMachine, who recently won Oscar gold with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio but were also responsible for the crass, lo-fi AdultSwim hit Robot Chicken (in terms of In the Know’s artfulness, the show is somewhere in between the two). The peculiarities of human faces have been painstakingly etched onto puppets, heightening odd expressions and physicalities without feeling like caricatures. Well, except for Sandy, who is responsible for a lot of “insert something insane to drop in normal conversation” jokes and often moves about like Frankenstein’s monster in the middle of being electrocuted back to life. Like a lot of adult animation, In the Know is aware that the look of animated media disarms broader audiences into not expecting sincere, affecting drama—so the stretches where Fabian is prompted to self-analyze prove much more rewarding than the easy-bait skewering of her socially-progressive “woke” lexicon.

The cleverest choice in In the Know is how it shows Lauren’s interviews with real-life celebs. Throughout the show, Lauren conducts rambling, narcissistic conversations with public figures like Jonathan Van Ness, Roxane Gay, Ken Burns, and Tegan And Sara, and watching their non-animated faces react to the intrusive, meandering musings and witticisms of their interviewer gives In the Know a multi-faceted and lightly absurd source of comedy that bolsters some of the less energized workplace sitcom B-stories.

Even though a lot of the satiric content feels tailor-made for an audience too niche to make In the Know the hit it deserves to be, this rarely gets in the way of how funny it is. Sometimes you’re gawking at the unearned confidence Lauren shows to his queer and BIPOC subjects, sometimes you’re caught off-guard by Lauren’s reflexive phrasing (one highlight, “Let me cut you off, which I like to do sometimes,” is superbly delivered by Woods). Sometimes, it simply feels like the In the Know writers had a lot of fun coming up with barbed jokes about its satiric target. When singing the praises of Lin Manuel Miranda’s rapping to a fairly confused Mike Tyson, Lauren notes his favorite thing about his Inside Amy Schumer sketch is that it’s six minutes long.

Woods has made it clear that In the Know has loftier dramatic goals than you might predict from, well, watching the show. “As we get more isolated in our respective echo chambers […] we want this show to start funny, scary, friendly conversations,” he notes to reviewers, at risk of putting his under-three-hour stop-motion radio series on too high a pedestal. But must something like In the Know embody the highest, media-shifting tenets of true satire? Is it not enough to be a skewed, strange, and snort-inducing look into a very silly corner of our culture? With the intention of not ending this review on a Lauren Caspian-esque rhetorical question: Yes, it is enough.

Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.