The Hamster Wheel is an Australian satirical news and current affairs show produced and broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, starting in 2012 and hosted by comedians Andrew Hansen, Dominic Knight, Chas Licciardello, Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel, and Chris Taylor, collectively known as The Chaser.
The Hamster Wheel provides examples of:
- Ax-Crazy: Chas.
- Butt-Monkey: Current affairs shows (to use the term very loosely) Today Tonight and A Current Affair provide endless amounts of material.
- Credits Gag: after some observations on The 7:30 Report solution to a not-quite-long-enough program.
- Cute Kitten: Politics With Cats Somewhat sadly, that's actually probably the best way to teach people about politics now.
- Deadpan Snarker: Everyone. All the time.
- Gag Sub: North Korea mourns.
- Godwin's Law: referenced whenever someone declares something to be the worst thing ever. Complete with Andrew Hansen in a Hitler costume and a computer-game screen advising how many seconds into the skit the reference took place. 21 seconds!
- Hypocritical Humor: One of the "outrages" in this clip is comedians making "inappropriate" jokes. After the headline "Craig Reucassel apologises for insulting Bali victims", "+ is a scrawny gap-toothed prick" is added in.
- Large Ham: Chas excels in this.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Parodied with obituaries of people who are still alive. Including the head of the ABC, the Federal Leader of the Opposition and the sitting Prime Minister. The first few were prefaced by one of the team supposedly discovering an tweet reporting said person's death, and the obituary would be retracted the following week. By the fourth episode of the series, they stopped bothering.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: From a segment about weather in the media:Alan Wilkie: Hang on there, why can't we just have a qualfied meteorologist simply explaining the forecast?Andrew: Well you could Alan - or, you could hire a trampolining dwarf!(cue clip from Britain's Bounciest Weather, accompanied by the caption, "Yes, this IS a real weather report. We swear.")
- Stylistic Suck: The Making of Politics With Cats, probably to appease complainers. Averted with the caption at the end, which claimed that "6387 cats were harmed during the making of this series."
