The Chaser's War on Everything

The Chaser's War on Everything is an Australian television satirical comedy series broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television station ABC1. It has won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Television Comedy Series. The cast perform sketches mocking social and political issues, and often feature comedic publicity stunts. The series is produced by The Chaser, an Australian satirical group consisting of Chris Taylor, Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel, Andrew Hansen, and Chas Licciardello. Fellow Chaser members Dominic Knight and Charles Firth are not part of the regular on-screen cast. However, Knight is a writer, and Firth compiled roving reports for the show from the United States, until he left the group to start a satirical newspaper in mid-2007.
The show premiered on 17 February 2006 and has since produced 58 episodes, broadcast over three seasons between 2006 and 2007 as well as during 2009. The first season was broadcast at a late timeslot on Friday nights. The second and third seasons were broadcast in a more favourable timeslot of Wednesdays at. The show did not return in 2008, but returned on 27 May 2009 for the third season featuring only ten episodes. Following the controversy of the "Make a Realistic Wish Foundation" sketch, the third season was reduced to 8 episodes, being suspended for 2 weeks.
The stunts displayed on the show have often been controversial. For example, on 14 July 2006, Licciardello was charged after selling fake knives to Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs fans outside one of their rugby league games. Licciardello was again arrested, alongside Morrow and nine crew members, on 6 September 2007 after breaching security at the 2007 APEC summit.
The last episode of the series was aired on 29 July 2009, and rated an average national audience of 1.45 million.

Origins

was formed by Dominic Knight, Charles Firth, Craig Reucassel, and Julian Morrow, and in 1999 ran a fortnightly newspaper entitled The Chaser. The group later added Chas Licciardello, Andrew Hansen, and Chris Taylor, to assist with its publication. Through the help of Andrew Denton, the Chaser team produced various shows for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, most notably CNNNN. In 2005, The Chaser began filming a pilot for a new television series for the ABC, with the working title The Age of Terror Variety Hour. The Chaser team signed a contract with the ABC to produce 27 half-hour episodes for 2006, which would be based on news reviews, studio monologues and confrontations with politicians, celebrities, and business leaders. The show was to be presented by Morrow, Hansen, Reucassel, Taylor and Licciardello.
The ABC rejected the name The Age of Terror Variety Hour and other names including Thank Allah It's Friday. ABC did accept The Chaser is Right, although it was later rejected by Morrow, while the title Hey Hey, it's the Chaser was rejected after a pilot under that name was filmed in 2005. They eventually selected The Chaser's War on Everything as the title. The show was to be performed in front of a live audience, in a more relaxed format than CNNNN and other Chaser television productions.

Release and popularity

Broadcast

The first season of The Chaser's War on Everything premiered on ABC1 on 17 February 2006 at. The series aired late on Friday evenings where it developed a cult following, getting an average national audience of between 591,000 and 821,000 viewers each episode. The show broadcast two 'best of' shows in the mid-year. The last episode of the 2006 season was broadcast on 8 September 2006.
Due to its popularity, The Chaser's War on Everything timeslot changed to Wednesday for the 2007 season. In the lead-up to the second season, The Chaser team produced a live webcast of people counting down to the first episode of the season. New segments had been developed and the opening sequence was reworked. After the move to prime time the ratings increased to almost 1.5 million viewers each week. This was despite direct competition with well-rated programs on commercial networks. The Chaser finished their 24th and final episode of the show for the 2007 season on 14 November 2007. They then produced The Chaser Decides for the remaining two episodes of the 26-episode production, based on the 2007 Australian federal election.
After the controversial APEC motorcade stunt, the show's profile was greatly increased and international broadcasts expanded. Countries which broadcast the show include Finland, Israel, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, South Korea, and Poland.
After the last episode of The Chaser Decides, The Chaser ruled out doing any television productions in the first half of 2008. This included The Chaser's War on Everything, with the group opting to do a stage production of their antics around Australia, called The Chaser's Age of Terror Variety Hour.
The American cable network G4 acquired the rights to the program in the United States, and premiered it on 28 January 2009 at 9PM ET. The show then aired every Wednesday night at 11PM ET within the network's international block of programming called Duty Free TV. Ads of the program have capitalised on its controversial nature in Australia, with the tagline "Do you know what it takes to be controversial in Australia?"
Similarly, in the United Kingdom, BBC Four was airing six compilation episodes, taking sketches and highlights from the first two series from 23 June 2009.
A third season of The Chaser's War on Everything began airing on 27 May 2009, returning to its timeslot of Wednesday at 9:00pm on ABC1. The third series consists of only 10 episodes and is the final series of the program.
The final episode was broadcast on ABC1 on 29 July 2009.
The entire catalogue of the Chaser's War on Everything was secured by the Comedy Channel Programming Director Darren Chau in 2009 and premiered on 3 December 2009 as part of the channel's Biggest Thursday Ever.

DVD release

The first 13 episodes of the first season were released on DVD on 17 August 2006. The release included commentary by The Chaser and the show's crew. Bonus features and unaired scenes were also included.
The second DVD for the first season contained the latter thirteen episodes. It was in the same format of the first DVD, containing commentary and unaired scenes, and was released on 1 November 2006. The first thirteen episodes of the second season were released on DVD on 14 August 2007, with similar features to the two prior releases.
The second DVD set for the later half of the second season was released on 7 August 2008. It contains similar features to the previous DVD releases.
The third and last season was released on DVD on 5 November 2009.

Vodcast

On 27 July 2006, the ABC announced that entire episodes of The Chaser's War on Everything, along with jtv, would be made available for download via a vodcasting system. Just 45 days after appearing on the Australian iTunes podcasting directory, the show took the number one position. The last four episodes of the first season averaged approximately 175,000 viewers of the vodcast, and 25,000 downloads, which ABC stated was a success.
The episodes of the second series of The Chaser's War on Everything were the most popular downloaded vodcasts in 2007. Almost nine million vodcasts were downloaded, more than half of the ABC's online vodcasts served in the year.
Season one of The War on Everything is now also available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store in Australia and is one of the first TV shows the Australian Broadcasting Corporation added to iTunes.

Show format

Credits – The opening credits show the five starring members of the show, but through that there are images of notable politicians and celebrities which are targeted in the titles. The titles are always the same except for two changeable titles, which targets persons in recent events. The closing credits simply read all the cast and crew of the show, though commonly a video is played over half the credits, which is explained in the Conclusion. The closing credits are a frequent source of humour. For example, Andrew Hansen once sang a song during the credits about how the credits are always played over his song. Another time the credits were shown in Ukrainian. On one episode the credits of the show were replaced with the credits of The New Inventors. In another episode from Season 3, Chas Licciardello, who in a sketch had changed his name to Gvhftr Kijl, was credited as such in the closing credits for that episode, and in the opening credits of the following episode.
Introduction – Each episode begins with Reucassel and Taylor opening the show. The pair discuss the major recent events, present their opinions, and often show a pre-produced stunt or sketch.
Andrew Hansen's hair – Each episode starting from the last episode of season 1, member Andrew Hansen changes his hair weekly for the show
Name changes – During season 2, the credits of names as displayed during the program have been replaced in various manners. Normally they were changed to people in recent events or a simple addition to the name. Examples included "Julian bin Morrow" and "Posh Chaser" and even the translation of the boys names in Arabic.
Dialogues – In almost every episode, the Chaser members discuss a various recent event or generalised stunt. Most of these dialogues lead to a pre-produced stunt, ad or trailer. Most of this material doesn't fall into one of the various Segments, where most of their recurring material is shown. In the first season, Monologues were also common.
Old Woman – As a running gag during Season 3, a photo of an old woman with a trolley would appear during sketches. Originally appeared during a stunt during Season 2, during an Ad Road Test for Riva Coffee, the footage subsequently placed occasionally in segments during Season 3. However, after the final episode was broadcast, she came in contact with The Chaser and requested her image be removed from future broadcasts. Images of Dom Knight now appear as such in the DVD of Season 3.
ABC Complainer – This segment began in the third season. After one of the sketches, Andrew Hansen, dressed as his persona Philip Harley, writes an angry letter to the ABC with a typewriter. The letter always begins with the phrase "Dear ABC", followed by a complaint about the latest sketch. Harley then presents his opinion, and concludes with "What a waste of taxpayer's money! Philip Harley, Adelaide." Harley appeared four times in episode 5 – the highest to date.
Conclusion – To end each episode the whole team gathers together, with one of the group members saying the closing joke. And Chris would read a Webpoll for their site.