YoungTown
Format
Mockumentary Sitcom (4 Seasons)
A firmly agnostic, socially anxious Gen-Z art student is forced to attend BYU, where he experiences firsthand the zeal, humanity, and quiet absurdities of life on one of the most religious campuses in the world.
Logline
Synopsis
Adrian is the last person you’d expect to find at one of the most religious campuses in the world—sarcastic, firmly agnostic, and deeply socially anxious. But when BYU becomes the only top-tier animation program willing to accept him, he has no choice but to attend. As one of the school’s few non-member students, Adrian quickly becomes the reluctant subject of a documentary experiment run by the university’s Office of Belonging.
Through this lens, the series follows Adrian and his eclectic “FHE family,” two student apartments—one male, one female—navigating the everyday chaos of college life. As friendships form, expectations collide, and awkward situations pile up, Adrian finds himself immersed in a community that is unfamiliar, seemingly absurd, and unexpectedly earnest. While the setting is highly specific, the story is universal: imperfect young adults trying to understand who they are, where they belong, and how to navigate the messy transition into adulthood.
Comps
Our Approach
YoungTown neither mocks faith nor defends it. It simply observes. BYU is not the punchline, it’s the backdrop, allowing humor to emerge organically from character, personality, and the awkwardness of human interaction. Like its genre predecessors, the comedy is rooted in sincerity, discomfort, and the collision of different worldviews, not in satire of belief.
The series is designed to invite a secular audience into an unfamiliar cultural space with curiosity and empathy rather than commentary. BYU and Provo provide texture and specificity, but the emotional core of the show lives in its characters: relatable, flawed, and authentically human young people stumbling through friendships, expectations, and self-discovery, people a secular viewer can understand, connect with, and ultimately root for.
From a production standpoint, YoungTown is intentionally modest and smart. Its contemporary setting keeps costs manageable, while the mockumentary format allows rawness and intimacy to become part of the charm. This approach lets the series start small, prioritize character, and build authenticity, creating a show that feels personal, grounded, and quietly surprising. It also makes YoungTown the ideal debut series for 1830 Studios: a clear expression of our belief that faith-adjacent stories can be funny, compelling, and human without ridicule, and that storytelling can build empathy where satire often builds distance.