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The Hamster Wheel series is being broadcast on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) on their TV station ABC1. It is being presented by 'The Chaser'. The Hamster Wheel is a sharp satire providing viewers with a straight blast of hard honesty in the face of the hypocrisies of the mainstream media.
It was reported by TV Tonight bac in July of 2011 that 'The Chaser' had a new television show in the works. Then in August of 2011 ABC announced that 'The Chaser' team was soon returning in a brand new series entitled 'The Hamster Wheel'.
The very first out of eight episodes aired October 5th of 2011.
It was in November of 2011 that confirmation was given that 'The Chaser' was going to return to TV in 2012, but it was never confirmed that they would be coming back with another Hamster Wheel season.
The following August 31st of 2012 ABC made an announcement that 'The Hamster Wheel' was returning for its second series. The following month in September this second series made its premiere on ABC1.
The Hamster Wheel series is set inside a very large hamster cage. There is a scene with Craig Reucassel, Chris Taylor, and Julian Morrow sitting at a desk shaped like a hamster which is named 'Horace'.
Here is where they place the segment called 'News of the Week'. It digs into some of the headline stories that happened over the past week. Then they usually follow that with their 'Inside the Wheel' segments that are presented by Chas Licciardello and Andrew Hansen.
The major show segments get broken up by the smaller segments. There are features like 'The Murdoch Tapes' showing The Chaser team interviewing James and Rupert Murdoch. They do this by using clips from the actual inquiry concerning the News International telephone-hacking scandal. They also throw in a segment known as 'Politics with Cats'. This segment involves Hansen describing the political story of that week using YouTube cat videos for the presentation.
In each episode there is a little small hamster that is named after Horace their desk. It is hidden within one of those scenes. Then shortly after the episode airs the Horace locations can be seen on The Hamster Wheel's website.
In the beginning the returning of The Chaser team back to TV was a welcomed event, but lots of people criticized what was a lack of 'Chaser-esque' stunts being put into The Hamster Wheel. Paul Kalina (of the Sydney Morning Herald) said that he believed The Hamster Wheel to be among their best outings to date and actually left him wanting more.
TV Tonight's David Knox made the comment that by the time this show ended he felt a little exhausted and only got to enjoy a scarce few laughs.
All the way through the first series this show was able to retain an average audience of around 860,000 viewers. This earned it first ranking in its time slot and it maintained first ranking through all but one of its aired episodes.
Toward the end of this one-time very controversial and all-conquering 'War on Everything' it seemed The Chaser simply ran out of steam. It appeared that the boys grew tired of slamming politicians and were weary of being called 'boys'. However, once they recharged those batteries, they came back with a new show that had even more genuine satire and they chose the victims with much greater precision.
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