The Chaser are an Australian satirical comedy team, who formed in 1999 with the founding of a parody newspaper by the same name. The core group consisted of former students of the University of Sydney: Charles Firth, Dominic Knight, Chas Licciardello (these three had previously met at Sydney Grammar School), Craig Reucassel, Julian Morrow, Andrew Hansen and Chris Taylor (though he did not meet the others until after his university years). The Chaser newspaper stopped printing in 2005, but continued to print annuals until 2010 and still continues online
. It has since resumed print as a quarterly in 2015.
In 2001, the team were approached by The ABC star Andrew Denton to produce a satirical TV series about the coming federal election. This four-part series, The Election Chaser, earned them a Silver Logie nomination and has led to a long and often controversial TV career for most of its members, together and separately.
TV programs produced by The Chaser include:
- The Election Chaser (2001) (four episodes)
- CNNNN (Chaser Non-stop News Network) (2002-2003, nineteen episodes)
- The Chaser Decides (six episodes, four of which covered the 2004 Federal Election, two covering the 2007 election)
- The Chaser's War On Everything (2006-2009, 58 episodes, not counting clip shows)
- Yes We Canberra (five episodes, covering the 2010 election)
- The Hamster Wheel (2011-2012, sixteen episodes)
- The Unbelievable Truth, based on the radio series of the same name, produced for the Seven Network (2012, ten episodes)
- The Hamster Decides (five episodes, covering the 2013 election)
- The Checkout, a consumer affairs show hosted by Julian and Craig among others, but with relatively little involvement from the rest of the team (2013-2018, 74 episodes)
- The Chaser's Media Circus (2014-2015, twenty episodes)
- The Chaser's Election Desk (five episodes covering the 2016 election, which featured several of the supporting cast from The Checkout)
