Griff Rhys Jones has been making people laugh for decades, but he found nothing to smile about when he visited the centre of Auckland for his new TV series Griff's Great Kiwi Road Trip.

"The centre, certainly around the area of Sky Tower, is actually horrible," says the Welsh-born actor, comedian and travel show presenter.

"If you want people to enjoy your city, you've got to be able to walk around it and you can't walk around the centre of the thing because just crossing the road means you have to cross four lanes of traffic.

"So, I would say, Auckland needs somebody in charge of it to work out how to make it into a decent city. I really do. And that's that. So you can quote me on that."

supplied Welsh-born actor Griff Rhys Jones tours New Zealand for his new TV series Griff's Great Kiwi Road Trip.

However, away from the hustle and bustle of the city centre is a different story altogether.

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"The suburbs are absolutely superb," he says.

"You go to the outskirts and you go on to Cheltenham Beach (on Auckland's North Shore) and you walk around the suburbs there, you're in the most enchanted, beautiful places in the world."

When it comes to cities, Rhys Jones could count himself as something of an authority.

He's chairman of Britain's Victorian Society and 20 years of presenting travel shows has enabled him to visit some of the biggest and best in the world.

Just don't tell him Christchurch resembles an English city.

SUPPLIED Griff Rhys Jones at Gibbs Farm sculpture park, Kaipara.

"Christchurch is nothing like an English city," he tells me during our chat, appropriately, in a Christchurch hotel.

"It doesn't resemble an English city in any way. Wellington resembles an English city – jammed with traffic coming up and down hills, narrow streets going in different directions. That was recognisably a British city."

Not that Rhys Jones puts the emphasis on the main centres of population during the making of his four-part road trip in which he journeys the length of the country.

The original pitch for the series was that he would investigate the Māori culture and way of life.

"I said, 'Well, I'm not sure I wanted to do a thing which was purely about Māori'," he says.

"And the reason is, I felt it would be culturally not right, really. You know, a white man going and making programmes around Māori."

Instead Rhys Jones explores modern-day New Zealand, explaining what it means to be a New Zealander today by meeting the locals, exploring the landscapes and witnessing the impact and relevance of traditional Māori heritage.

supplied Griff Rhys Jones in Queen Charlotte Sound.

It was a journey that led to one particularly moving encounter at a Northland marae where he drew on the parallels between the Welsh and Māori.

"How interesting that as a native people, we have this great tradition of singing. We have this great tradition of hospitality, we have these rituals and our own language," he says.

"It was just good to be able to make that speech in a marae, you know, and say here we are and this is what we share. I was ashamed of the fact that I wasn't able to sing the national anthem in Welsh. Although when I made my programme (A Great Welsh Adventure) I spent a week learning how to do it."

Just how successful he was is perhaps debatable since not a note made it into the final cut.

What TV producers do like, however, is to push Rhys Jones out of his comfort zone. In past series he has kayaked through white-water rapids in a Canadian canoe, abseiled down waterfalls and made a memorable series called Mountain, in which he traverses the mountains of Great Britain, from Wales to the Northern Highlands of Scotland.

"When I started doing Mountain, it was to push the limits of what I could do," he says. "In a way I was told that's what I could do because the walking around and pointing at things was being done by other people.

"I said, 'What if I fall off?'

"They said, 'Well, Griff if you could fall off that would be terrific'."

In Griff's Great Kiwi Road Trip, he might not be climbing any mountains but they and other sights have certainly grabbed his attention.

"I keep saying to the team I'm working with, 'Stop, stop. We've got to film this'," he says.

"And they go, 'What?' 'This beautiful scenery all around you.'

"People in New Zealand are so used to it, they don't really see it."

Griff's Great Kiwi Road Trip, Prime, starts Sunday November 10.