The Hamster Wheel

The Hamster Wheel is an Australian television satirical comedy series broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television station ABC1. It is presented by The Chaser team.

Production

In July 2011, TV Tonight reported that The Chaser were working on developing a new television show.^[1] In August 2011, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation announced the Chaser team would return in a new show titled The Hamster Wheel.^[2] The first of eight episodes aired on 5 October 2011.^[3] In November 2011, it was confirmed that The Chaser would return to television in 2012, however, it was not confirmed whether they would return with another season of The Hamster Wheel.^[4]

Show format

The Hamster Wheel is set within a large hamster cage. It generally begins with Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel and Chris Taylor sitting at their Hamster-shaped desk named Horace.^[5][6] Here they present the segment "News of the Week" which delves into some of the stories that made headlines in the past week. This is traditionally followed by the "Inside the Wheel" segment, presented by Andrew Hansen and Chas Licciardello.^[7] The main segments of the show are broken up by other smaller segments and features including "The Murdoch Tapes" where The Chaser team appear to be interviewing Rupert and James Murdoch by utilising clips from the inquiry into the News International phone hacking scandal^[7] and "Politics with Cats" where Hansen describes a political story of the week using a selection of YouTube cat videos.^[8] Every episode a small hamster, named after their desk Horace, is hidden in one of the scenes. The locations of Horace are revealed on The Hamster Wheel website shortly after the airing of the episode.^[9]

Episodes

Reception and ratings

Initially, the return of The Chaser team to television was welcomed, however, many critised the lack of Chaser-esque stunts in The Hamster Wheel. Paul Kalina from the Sydney Morning Herald stated The Hamster Wheel was "one of their best outings yet" and left him asking for more.^[7] In contrast, Clem Bastow also from the Sydney Morning Herald stated that the hamster should be put down stating that The Hamster Wheel was a "dunderheaded, boring show".^[8] David Knox from TV Tonight commented that "by the time show was over I felt a bit exhausted but only having enjoyed a handful of laughs".^[21] Throughout the series, The Hamster Wheel has retained an average viewing audience of approximately 860,000 viewers, ranking it 1st for its timeslot for all but one of the aired episodes.^{[10][12][14][15][16][17][19]}

References

External links

• Official website