I was fortunate enough to be sent this by a friend of mine. This is the only thing by The Chaser that I've seen(I understand it isn't the only thing they've done), but I'd definitely be open to anything else by them. Five Aussies with each their specialty(you *have* to hear Andrew's song lyrics(also, him as The Crazy Warehouse Guy, and to a slightly lesser extent, Clive, is amazing), and Julian couldn't be possess a better deadpan wit), armed with a legal department for the riskier(law-wise) stunts take on, well, *everything*. Politics and news coverage(both mainly in their homeland; note that us in the rest of the world won't know all of the names and journalists that they go for... still, the majority of it will make you laugh), blind faith, common idiocy, etc. They see just how far service providers will go to make their customers happy, how readily stores and the like accept actual public service announcements(Open Mic), and, in one of the most memorable bits, how strict security at APEC was. Yes, they got in trouble a couple of times... and the very next week, they joked about it. Who can forget the Ad Road Test(where they see if the commercials give a realistic image of what their product can do), If Life Were A Musical and Anna Coren's Segue of The Week? There's a wide range of humor here, with silliness, cleverness, references, verbal and black comedy, and, yes, biting satire. They re-enact, parody, take out of context, ask questions of celebrities and the man on the street(ranging from the goofy, random and out of place(like ones from Trivia Pursuit, for example) to serious and vital ones... near the end, they see how much it takes to get your average ordinary guy to change his democratic vote), and use irony(often of precision worthy of a laser). At their best, these guys are *hilarious*(and they're just about invariably really, really funny), quotable and spot-on. While I do think they got too disgusting and tasteless on occasion, this hardly ever happened. I would say that anyone who got upset about anything these blokes did quite possibly misunderstood their intention. This didn't get a long enough run(then again, if they kept this level of quality up, I wouldn't want it to ever end); it seems like it's ended, with only about two seasons. There is plenty of strong language, and some disturbing content and bloody violence in this. The DVDs come with cast commentary(for every episode, I think), deleted segments, and a little behind the scenes footage. I wholeheartedly recommend this to any fan of this sort of thing. This is like Australia's version of The Daily Show(and it's definitely superior to how TDS has been recent years). 9/10
