So, last night I went along to a taping of the new show from The Chaser team, Yes We Canberra, which is if you can’t guess their election special series. Below I’ll give you a sneak peak of if the show is any good, some interesting insights into the behind the scenes including a chat with rarely seen Chaser Boy, Dominic Knight, and some insight into the magic of the ABC.

Firstly, a little bit on the experience – the show was meant to start filming at 7. Soon after we were told by the team to go away and come back in an hour, firstly by the lovely ABC staff then by the boys themselves:

Yes, that’s my Mum harassing them in the background.

When we turned back up at 8 we waited again. Then some more. And then a little more. The show just kept getting pushed back, which I naturally dealt with by posting to Twitter:

Finally after 9 pm we got ushered into the studio – but not before my Mum was pulled aside to be in one of the Chaser’s skits, so it wasn’t all bad. While we waited I had a chance to talk to the offscreen Chaser writer, Dominic Knight, about the delay, the new show and, surprisingly, social media.

Seems the Chaser began preproduction for the show in June. Remember June? Before Julia “Brutus” Gillard disposed of Rudd? Before the election was called? Yeah, it seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Seems the change in Government meant the boys had to scrap a lot of Rudd material and dramatically move up the schedule when the election was called much earlier than they had planned for.

When asked if there would be any jokes about Gillard’s earlobes in the show tonight Knight did make an interesting comment that within five minutes of an event like that all the best jokes are already on Twitter so they probably wouldn’t bother. I think for comedy, especially reactive, news and political based shows like the Chaser, Good News Week, The Daily Show etc, this makes for a really interesting environment: what more can they bring to the table? Unfortunately we didn’t get to discuss this because it was (finally) time for the show!

For those who don’t know the premise of the show is that the Chaser are the warm up act for Lateline, with all the activity taking place on a Lateline (inspired) set – but is it any good? The short answer is ‘yes’ but the longer one is ‘yes… I think. I hope so.’ The delays and the late night meant the crowd was less into it than they would have been at 7 pm, and there’s always the factor that things can be less funny at taping due to repetition etc etc. Based on what I saw though I’ll be watching each episode and would suggest you do the same. Time will tell if it’s the Chaser back at their best, but if the off the cuff jokes they threw around on set are any indication they’re still very funny guys.

Based on the fact they were still doing dress rehearsals at 8 pm, it did feel a bit raw, with Chris Taylor missing some cues and some general confusion abounding. There didn’t seem much of Chas in the first episode, but it does feature a surprising guest (EDIT: as the clip below shows, the guest is none other than Julie Bishop herself) and an actually very funny musical number.

The Chaser are also going to be running a section of the show each week looking at the election in social media – which seems to be something every man and his blogging dog is doing now, but it was still amusing.

My Mum (on the left) got to be part of the fictional fan club for Lateline host, Tony Jones, dubbed ‘The Silver Foxy Ladies’ - AND she got to keep the shirt! (That, or we stole ABC property. Oops.)

Finally over four hours after it was meant to start – Enough Rope with Andrew Denton holds the ABC record for longest recording time of four hours, so if you include all the waiting around the Chaser smashed this – it was all over and it was time to head out. As we left we were handed lollies from the buckets the team used while being ‘warm up guys’ by very apologetic staff:

“Sorry, wish it was cash but all we’ve got are Minties.”

If that doesn’t sum up a night at the ABC, I don’t know what does.

The Chasers new show, Yes We Canberra, starts airing tonight and will air each Wednesday at 9:45 pm on ABC1 during the election campaign.