It takes a long time and a lot of work to get to 100 episodes of anything, but the team at Jono and Ben are about to break that mark with their 101st show on Friday.
The comic duo of Jono Pryor and Ben Boyce are back on TV screens after around a seven-week hiatus (along with friends Guy Williams and Laura Daniel), but if you thought they were prepared for it you'd be wrong.
"We're about 40 percent filmed? With a couple of days to go," Boyce says.
But, based on previous experience or perhaps a bit of bravado, Pryor is a bit more optimistic.
"We're going to be good for the first show.
"We always go in every year [and say] 'we'll get a lot of stuff banked, we'll be organised' but after three or four weeks you slip into filming week to week," Pryor says.
And it seems the case is no different this time around. When they spoke to Newshub earlier this week, they were running a bit late for their interview, having just come from filming an Olympic-inspired segment at Mt Smart stadium.
"Some of your best stuff comes from [filming week to week], because you're reacting to stuff that's happening and the pressure's on," Boyce says.
This year is the pair's fifth season on air together, but the current version is a more family-oriented and less risqué version of the initial half-hour Jono and Ben at Ten.
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In that time they've become almost a single person - it'd be a rare sight to see them apart. They've joked they spend more time together than with their own families, but sometimes truth is said in jest - aside from the TV show and the junkets, they also host The Rock's drive show from 3pm to 7pm on weekdays.
The move to a prime time slot at 7:30pm has brought with it some challenges and a whole new following, they say.
"When you move from 10pm to 7.30pm, the variety of people who watch the show is really vast and wide. We did something in Dunedin where people had to line up outside a shop and there were four-year-olds there and there were toothless bogans," Pryor recalls.
But that's not to say they're recognised everywhere.
"It depends where you go. We did something in a supermarket in Remuera selling fake products and it really upset Remuera housewives who wouldn't sign the release form to go on television," Pryor says.
Those kinds of stunts - whether they go to air or not - are thought up in a collaborative process with the pair as well as the mostly young team of up-and-coming comedians who work on the writing team.
It's a good training ground for them, giving them an outlet for their creativity and also full-time work, Pryor says - or tried to at least.
"We've got quite a young team, in terms of writers, who are sort of new faces on the New Zealand comedy scene and the changing style of comedy and what people find funny in 2016 is far different to what people found funny in 2010, so we find it really good to have a mixed bunch of people with their ideas - I don't know what I'm saying. I'm just talking words," he laughs.
"I kind of left you out to dry on that one, good wingman, eh? I think your heart was in the right place. You gave it a bash much like the TV show - no, it is good what you said," an ever-supportive Boyce chipped in.
But Pryor admits being on the show's production team would be a "hell of a job".
When senior government minister Steven Joyce was hit by a flying dildo on the eve of Waitangi Day, it made international headlines and was prime material for satire, jokes and ridicule.
And it also made for a strange assignment for the production team.
"A lot of people had to go to shops on K Rd to buy stuff for our show then," Boyce says.
"We've got 36 of them in a box if you need one," Pryor offers.
In their mid-season hiatus, only a small chunk of it was an actual holiday - they still continued with their radio show while the rest was planning and shooting material for future episodes.
And they've promised a lot - interviews with Hollywood celebrities Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Jared Leto who star in DC's upcoming Suicide Squad film, they're buying an island and blown a "large amount of money" on the format for a Japanese game show.
Pascall has come on board too, offering a high-stakes prize for the entire country if the pair can complete an Olympic-style event.
Both are hopeful they've still got another 100 episodes up their sleeves, but they're not taking anything for granted.
"I don't know how we're on telly, and I'm sure there are a lot of people on comments sections around the country that are saying the same thing but we feel very lucky to be on telly and we still love what we do," Boyce says.
The 101st episode of Jono and Ben airs on Friday night at 7.30pm on TV3.
Newshub.
