Stream It Or Skip It: ‘In The Know’ On Peacock, A Stop-Action Animated Series About A Public Radio Show With A Narcissistic Host

The new series In The Know isn’t the first show where animated characters interview live-action celebrities, but it might be one of the funniest. It comes down to the character doing the interviews: A self-satisfied caricature of a public radio host, who sometimes asks insightful questions, but more often than not just wants to talk about himself.

IN THE KNOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A skinny guy with glasses and some wild hair stands in front of his bathroom mirror, practicing his reactions to what people say in interviews.

The Gist: Lauren Caspian (Zach Woods) is the host of In The Know, a public radio program. He’s the third-most-popular host on NPR, and he seems to revel in that obscure bit of fame. He also likes to virtue signal, as he talks to his engineer Carl (Carl Tart) about the “unhoused gentleman” that he helped that morning, and the fact that he generally offered the man the office’s bathroom. Lauren suggests that he and Carl hang out that weekend, and Carl politely refuses, citing fictional friends that will be at his place.

Also in the office is Barb (J. Smith-Cameron), the exceedingly polite executive producer, Chase (Charlie Bushnell), the dudebro intern, and Sandy (Mike Judge), a film reviewer that is pale and creepy. Fabian (Caitlin Reilly), the show’s super-angry researcher, tells Lauren that all he needs to know about his first guest, Kaia Gerber, is that she’s a “straight white woman.”

After the interview with Gerber, where Lauren bounces from topic to topic, including peeing in the bathtub and the unhoused man he helped, Barb informs him that the man is still in the bathroom. She uses the term “homeless”, which Lauren says is “hate speech,” while Fabian chides Lauren for using “unhoused,” saying the proper term is “person who is currently without housing.” In the meantime, everyone has to go to the bathroom, and the unhoused person is still locked inside.

Lauren then interviews Jonathan Van Ness, calling him the “self-described Malcolm X of the gay community.” He asks JVN surprisingly insightful questions, and as his guest gives a long answer about giving makeovers jibing with Queer Eye‘s message of self acceptance, Lauren ignores all of it responding to Barb, who wants to see just why the unhoused man in the bathroom isn’t responding to knocks or anything. He may be sick, or worse. But Lauren insists that he be undisturbed, even when Chase forgets to get him his post-show kombucha, leading to a disturbance in Lauren’s delicately-balanced gastrointestinal health.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In The Know is a bit of a cross between a stop-action animated series like Moral Orel and a cartoons-interview-real-celebrities series like Space Ghost Coast To Coast.

Our Take: Created by Woods, Judge and Brandon Gardner, In The Know accomplishes a few things in a really funny way. It skewers public radio, of course, and its perpetual lack of money — in the second episode, for instance, a dudebro contributor played by Will Ferrell tempts Lauren to leave with an amount of money that makes him swoon, and it’s a nice but not earth-shattering number. It’s also a fun showcase for fully-improvised interviews between Woods as Lauren and the celebrities he talks to.

But some of the funniest moments are when Lauren’s narcissism and virtue signaling is called out by the other people in the office, either subtly by characters like Barb or Carol or overtly by the perpetually-annoyed Fabian. Barb, for instance, is still trying to find out who murdered her husband, but that doesn’t matter in the face of whatever Lauren is doing at a particular moment.

It’s an effective skewering of the sometimes-pretentious nature of public radio and the preciousness that some of its programming can occasionally project, but it’s also a fun way to show that while some people think they’re doing the right thing, they’re more interested in the glory of doing that right thing than anything else.

Back to the interviews for a moment: They’re a lot of fun because they’re not designed to be Jiminy Glick-style “gotcha” questions, as strange as Lauren’s line of questioning can be at times. As Woods and Gardner have said in interviews, the celebrities are instructed to give authentic reactions, as if it’s a real interview, and to not pretend to be offended or anything else. It leads to some uncomfortable laughter, but also some intriguing responses to questions they don’t normally get.

Sex and Skin: None that we know of, though Sandy does have a dalliance with a breast pump in the second episode.

Parting Shot: Terry the maintenance man (Chris Diamantopoulos) sees the mess Lauren made in the utility closet and says, “I hate that guy.”

Sleeper Star: Mike Judge is perfectly creepy as Sandy, who is that weird guy that every office has that somehow never loses his job.

Most Pilot-y Line: When JVN quotes Jennifer Lopez, Lauren says he’s not familiar with her, and asks “Is she a victim of wage theft?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. In The Know is a quirky, funny series that works on a few different levels, and it effectively combines animation and live action.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.