Three's new current affairs show Paddy Gower Has Issues walks a tonal tightrope - balancing comedic heckling and faux-serious investigations with in-depth reporting on important issues of the day.

Three's new current affairs show Paddy Gower Has Issues walks a tonal tightrope - balancing comedic heckling and light-hearted investigations with in-depth reporting on the big issues.

About 40 minutes into the first episode of Paddy Gower Has Issues, Newshub's Laura Tupou spoke about how moved she was by some students she spoke to during her investigation into New Zealand's why reading rates have fallen.

"Seeing children's faces light up when they were able to read books and understand what they were reading, I'm just like: 'Why can't every kid learn how to read in this country? Why doesn't every school teach how to learn to read in this way?"

The show's host, Patrick Gower, said he would be grilling Minister of Education Jan Tinetti on the issue shortly.

Before he could get to that though, he had another topic on address: Karen O'Leary's investigation on behalf of her friend Zoe into why our supermarkets play such sad music.

The quick transition from literacy to levity is typical for the show, which walks a tonal tightrope between comedy and serious, in-depth investigations.

The show's first episode was centred on these two threads - Tupou's heavy and technical look at literacy and comedian O'Leary's light but still surprisingly rigorous deep dive into supermarket tunes.

Tupou interviewed school teachers, principals, students, and academics to build the case for classrooms to adopt a structured - rather than balanced - method of reading education.

That might sound a little academic, but interviews with students and educators gave it a personal touch.

Meanwhile, O'Leary spoke to a Danish academic who has spent 30 years studying the effects of music on shopping habits.

"What say I wanted to make someone buy mince? If I had them just hearing the word 'mince' on repeat over and over again, do you think that would work?" she asked.

"Um, that's a good question," he replied.

O'Leary tested that by sending three shoppers around a Countdown with headphones playing different soundtracks: one happy, one sad, and one with 'mince' on repeat.

Unfortunately, there was a flaw in the operation: the mystery mince shopper was vegan.

"I didn't know that," deadpanned O'Leary in a conversation with Gower.

The contrast between these two topics would be stark at the best of times…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details