TV Pick of the week: The Jono Project

The Jono Project. Photo / Supplied

In this day and age even award-winning shows are not immune to budget cuts and being axed. That's the predicament renegade broadcaster Jono Pryor found himself in when his triumphant Qantas award-winning show Jono's New Show struck hard times last year and was forced off the air.

But he's a good keen - and cheeky - man, and he's back.

He's changed the show's name, rather imaginatively to The Jono Project, and drafted in a team of cohorts, including celebrity interviewer and comedian Dai Henwood, a music parody duo (more on them soon), and TV host Shannon Ryan as an, er, intrepid reporter. Each week the team set about satirising New Zealand music, television and themselves, while also poking fun at news, stories and people from around the world.

Actually, not much about Jono's show has changed at all it seems, apart from the fact the set is a make-shift amalgam of borrowed bits and pieces from other TV shows. Plus, The Jono Project is less skit-based and more sketch-comedy style with Jono's topical news narrative woven through each episode. Very fancy.

And to flash things up even more, Jono has recruited comedians Steve Wrigley and this year's Billy T. Award winner, Rhys Mathewson, to his writing team.

Also starring this year are singing-songwriting duo Red Sea Buoys (aka Sam Smith from rockers Streetwise Scarlet and Jaden Parkes of punk pop outfit Goodnight Nurse), writers of songs like All I Wanna See is Red on Your Head for former Nightline news reader Samantha Hayes. Each week they will showcase a new original song - and first up the lads premiere All Whites, the unofficial supporters song for the Kiwi World Cup team.

In the first show, Jono catches up with former Good Morning TV host Steven Gray in a sketch about the "real reason" behind his departure, and Dai is in the Big Apple to talk to Tiffany, who as a teenager in the 80s scored a string of No1 hits including I Think We're Alone Now.

Other guest stars to get the Dai treatment over the course of the series will be musician Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, aka P Diddy, aka Diddy), car nuts Greg Murphy and Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson, Fab Morvan from disgraced lip-synching 80s act Milli Vanilli, and actor Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad.

When: Mondays, 8.30pm
Where: C4
What: News, interviews and silly buggers