Galaxy quest

How the stars have aligned for Tamati Rimene-Sproat after he turned his back on TVNZ current affairs.

-  RUSSELL BAILLIE

At the start of his new show explaining everything everyone needs to know about Matariki, Tāmati Rimene-Sproat is pondering the heavens. "When I look up, I see the sky in all its majesty," he says in his best TV-presenter voice as we gaze at a glowing Milky Way. "It's where we come from ... well, I come from Masterton. But that's beside the point."

And so begins his second instalment of From Hongi to Hangi and Everything In Between, the series built around Rimene-Sproat's engaging, lighthearted and highly amusing ability to explain te ao Māori to anyone who might not know what that term means but may be willing to find out.

Last year, the first FHtH show about marae etiquette won him the best entertainment presenter gong at the local television awards. That, and the show's reception, might have confirmed he'd made the right move by leaving TVNZ, where in a few years he had gone from Te Karere to Seven Sharp to Sunday, before going out on his own. In his two years on Seven Sharp, he'd been largely used as the light-relief reporter on a current affairs show where the just-for-fun factor is already high. Maybe it was the moustache.

"When I shifted to Seven Sharp, I felt like I was playing this classic Billy T James cheeky Mäori-boy role and I got sick of it really quickly because there wasn't any depth to it. It was just 100% light and not a lot of shade. To be honest, I wanted to leave TVNZ then."

He was happier at Sunday, which provided a chance to learn about deeper small-screen storytelling. But having got what many journalists would see as a coveted role on a current affairs flagship, after two years he figured it just wasn't him.