Late Night Big Breakfast is back, starting with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and National Party Leader Judith Collins

Judith Collins sitting in a padded swivel chair in a mid-range Auckland furniture store enduring the strangest television interview of her career.

As the stone-faced National Party leader answers questions like: “What do you do to relax?” The sound of an electric drill threatens to drown her.

A maintenance worker carrying a ladder overlooks as customers buying coffee tables stop and stare.

When Collins is asked, “What keeps you up at night?”, The acrid smell of a hot meatloaf hangs over your head.

READ MORE:
* Leigh Hart says now is the perfect time for the Great Late Night Breakfast to return
* Leigh Hart wants to give viewers some comic relief with Big Isolation Lockdown
* On Lockdown, Leigh Hart faces her biggest television challenge yet

To make matters worse, the show’s hosts keep arguing in front of her.

“You have already asked for that”, criticizes one.

“Are you working with the same script?” replies the other, as he lowers and lifts his chair, kicks a glass of water and tries to connect with the third co-host of the program, who does not respond.

For all this coordinated chaos, we can thank Leigh Hart.

At 50, the crown prince of the shameful comedy Kiwi is making a comeback Great late night breakfast, a cult favorite from their huge catalog of pisstake shows.

With his collaborator Jason Hoyte and a rotating cast of collaborators, including Seven sharpJeremy Wells and Paranormal WellingtonMike Minogue, it’s the show’s first season in five years.

He returns tonight on TVNZ’s Duke channel with a political special starring Hart and Hoyte’s most important interviews: Collins and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

While unlikely to influence the outcome of this week’s election, the appearance of two political heavyweights says something of the pull power of Hart, who has spent decades shipping tried and true TV formats.

He has threaded police reality shows on Speedo Cops, poked fun at celebrity food shows on Speed ​​Cooking, and took an interest in travel shows with Mysterious Planet.

Screaming reels, Hart and Hoyte’s magnificent six-part fishing show of 2017, didn’t feature a single fish.

Despite a later catalog suggesting otherwise, Hart denies any nefarious intent in the shows he chooses to skewer.

“We don’t make fun of them,” he says.

“We are trying to improve them.”

Either way, Hart’s brand of television – the DIY sets, the dishonest questions, the random jokes, and the quick edit – has earned him legions of fans across multiple formats, platforms, time slots, and brands.

You have snails to thank for getting you this point.

Hart got his big break on SportsCafe, the pioneering Sky TV chat show that he spontaneously signed up to play an Olympic snail trainer. Hart’s performance was so good that he became “That Guy,” a regular contributor who hosted bizarre interviews with sports stars on a weekly basis. then directing the show’s internal band.

These days, Hart’s brand has spread beyond television, with a five-year stint alongside Hoyte featuring Hauraki’s broadcast radio behind him, while the pair continue to provide endless sexual innuendos for commentary on. alternative cricket, when the sport is allowed to be played.

He also created his own streaming service, Moonflix, which houses all of his projects, including his 2000s skit show Moon TV, his London 2012 Olympics masterpiece Olympico, and his shop character studio. of Hamsterman pets.

That’s not all: Their Wakachangi lager, which started out as a joke, is sold in most supermarkets, along with their accompanying variety of fries.

Hart is also known by many as the meat man in the Hellers and Kiwi Bacon commercials.

Hart has flirted with prime time, but has never become a mainstay.

That’s about to change – you just finished your level four survival series. Leigh Hart’s Great Isolation Block, and later this month he will star in the New Zealand adaptation of the hit British game show. Foreman.

Foreman it’s big, but it’s Great late night breakfast Which fans point to as the perfect match for Hart’s whimsical brand of comedy.

While it took critics a while to sink in (“wrong” and “whiny” said some early reviews when it debuted in 2014), it soon became clear that there was something special about the mix of random musicians, ridiculous mistakes, corrupt infomercials, bad advice. health and absurd conversations.

Award-winning local television critic Diana Wichtel believes it to be Hart’s finest creation.

“I’ve always been a fan of his audacity,” she says.

“It’s quite brave … to have such a high threshold of shame. I am filled with admiration that he is able to be so clumsy and unbearable and not curl up and die.

“I do not know how he does it”.

Ask Hart that question, and you’re unlikely to get a serious answer.

That’s because he’s almost always in character, especially if Hoyte is around.

“It’s a breakfast night show,” Hart says when asked if he’s made any changes this season.

“It is very difficult to change that format, except to put it on at lunchtime.”

Hoyte singles out a “women’s issues” segment as a new addition.

“It’s a panel of men,” Hoyte declares, expressionless.

“It wouldn’t work any other way.”

What fans can expect is incredible absurdity.

The first season featured regular appearances by a Mongolian-throated singer, while a full episode dedicated to Lorde barely mentioned the pop star.

Another was interrupted by a “little horse” roaming around Target.

A recurring segment called “Bookshelf’s” often featured Hart and Joe Bennett discussing how to pronounce “bookshelf’s” correctly.

Meanwhile, Hoyte regularly promoted Rectusol, a fake hemorrhoid cream, over smooth jazz.

The show’s hosts regularly seemed baffled by their duties, with interviews rife with arguments about who should ask questions and when they should.

It may sound stupid, but Wichtel says there is a lot of intelligence behind the show.

“It takes a lot of work to be so random,” he says. “He seems voraciously silly, but he’s smarter than he looks.”

Wichtel thinks Hart’s influence is obvious. She points to the informal interview style that news journalists favor these days, and the inclusion of comics like Wells and Laura Daniel in Seven sharp, as examples.

“You even see it in things like The project,” she says.

“That kind of program used to be terrible when it was done in previous decades. Finally, there is a whole generation that can handle that kind of informality.”

Casual is what Hart likes, and it extends to his co-stars, who aren’t given a script when they arrive on set.

“Nobody really knows what’s going on because it’s all in Leigh’s head,” says Josh Thomson, who plays an inept intern at Great late night breakfast.

“It’s like a jazz musician, but with comedy. When you’re new it’s a bit strange. You walk in and he says, ‘We’ll go here and do things.’

“It just starts, then ends, and you think, ‘What the hell happened?'”

There is a method to Hart’s madness. Ange Hart, Hart’s wife, with whom he has two children, confirms that he takes his television creation incredibly seriously.

She always knows when a shoot is coming because there will be “notes all over the house … in the car, in the drawers, in the bathroom, on the bed.”

For Collins and Ardern, Ange reveals that Hart got up at 4 a.m., honing his pranks to make sure they would work.

A few hours after Collins smiles and puts down his swivel chair, we can see if they do.

Upcoming Prime Minister, Hart and Hoyte interview to Great late night breakfast, enter the back door of the Auckland furniture store accompanied by a single security guard.

Lights blaze around two sofas and a coffee table. A guitar rests on a sofa. A giant drone is on the ground. A package of sushi is placed under a pillow.

All of these are possible jokes that will be used during your interview.

Ardern, weary from a day of back-to-back interviews during the campaign, takes stock of all this, smiles and says, “I have no idea what we’re doing.”

Hoyte’s response is instantaneous: “Neither do we.”

Late Night Big Breakfast airs on Duke tonight at 8.30pm and will be available to stream via TVNZ OnDemand.