Nigel Latta, who co-hosts with John Campbell, believes the miniseries will bring into focus major future issues, including jobs being subject to robotic takeovers, and the world our children will grow up in.
"Technically, it's one of the most ambitious bits of television ever in this country," Latta tells the Herald on Sunday.
"It's going to be a national conversation with New Zealand about the future. What's coming, where we're headed and some of the decisions we need to make.
"We're heading towards, potentially, machine learning coming in and taking away 40 per cent of jobs humans are currently doing. So where will the jobs be in future for our kids? It's not just factory workers, we're talking accountants and lawyers.
"You're not going to watch this and think: 'I've seen that before'."
In an age when television habits have been subject to massive change, the live format is also a bid at trying to return to more traditional appointment viewing.
"We want it to be a conversation. We literally will be shaping the show as we're going along, based on what people are saying," Latta says.
"People will go to the website and during each episode we will be putting up questions for people to vote on and comment on and that will be fed directly into the show. It's effectively a live documentary."
Latta and Campbell will be joined by a group of "futurists", a panel of "experienced, forward-thinking New Zealanders".
They include Richard Branson protege Derek Handley, education specialist Frances Valintine - named one of the world's top 50 innovators - and Wendy McGuinness, chief executive of the McGuinness Institute - a "non-partisan think tank" that investigates sustainability.
The show is timed for three months before the election and Latta hopes politicians will pay attention.
"We made a deliberate decision not to include politicians anywhere. This is just us. This is about what we want and what we think is important," Latta says.
"I hope politicians do watch it. Kiwis are progressive and we will want bold visions.
"Instead of giving us the same old tired horse-s*** that we get every election - if politicians see there is an appetite for bold, future-based visions, hopefully they might start to give us some of that stuff."
Each show will have live and pre-recorded content. The pre-recorded segments are an important way of drilling down into finer detail and making sure innovative individual ideas are included as well as the populist results of the national surveys, says Latta.
With months of work already put into the show, Latta says it has affected his perception of our future. "My son is 17 and he has no interest in driving - it has been driving me a little bit crazy because I've been saying, 'You need to learn, you can't leave home and not drive'.
"But you can totally leave home and not drive, I've completely relaxed on that thing because the reality is in his lifetime, driving a car isn't actually going to be a thing.
"That's why I think people should watch it - and kids, too, because there's some really important stuff in here about the future and what your life is going to look like over the next 20 years."
What Next? screens live at 8.30pm each night from tonight until Thursday on TVNZ 1
