Watching all four on Monday night

Tonight’s show is a mixed bag – maybe a few too many liquorice bullets for my liking – but pretty satisfying all the same. Score: B On the Couch, Fox Footy It’s all black jeans and RMs for On the Couch. The set looks like it’s been designed by AI: with its twin couches set in a V, a tiny coffee table in the middle, and an entertainment console in the distance, it looks like a living room in which no one will ever actually live.

But given how stiffly robotic the hosts are, it may be perfect. Jack Riewoldt has a long-sleeved T-shirt, signifier of his dual status as The Host and The Relaxed One. The other three – Jordan Lewis, Nathan Buckley, Jonathan Brown – are in collared shirts. All four wear dark skinny jeans and RMs. It’s like we’re watching some weird sort of social experiment – “see what happens when we put four Alpha Males together and tell them to be nice to each other” – and it’s uncomfortable as hell. Maaaate, you can almost cut the testosterone with a knife. For the first half of the show, if someone cracked a joke it would die of loneliness. But when they get to the tipping for round one, a little playful banter starts to creep in. When they go to a segment that they claim Lyon, formerly the host, had wanted to poach – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – the first thing they do is praise the Fox Footy commentary team for its opening-round call.

And right there, you have this show in a snapshot: it’s matey, it’s closed shop and for all the insight it might offer, it’s not especially inviting to outsiders. “Well boys, what do you think, good show,” asks Riewoldt at the end. “Oh yeah,” says Lewis, sounding not especially convinced, while Brown and Buckley look on blank-faced. “We don’t determine that.” Too right, Jordie. Too right. Score: C-

The Agenda Setters, Seven Seven’s team on the Monday night edition of The Agenda Setters. There’s something different about this one, but I can’t immediately put my finger on it … oh, wait. THERE’S A WOMAN ON IT! After endless blokiness, I can’t tell you how great it is to see a woman talking about the game. And not just any woman, but Caroline Wilson, who seriously knows her stuff (and also writes for this masthead). Alongside her are Kane Cornes, Craig Hutchison – whose company produces the show – and Nick Riewoldt. They’re all seated in a line at a big desk, its lower regions made out to look like a tearout from a red-top tabloid.

The Agenda Setters sets its agenda immediately: the opening titles feature press clippings, but only from the Kerry Stokes-owned West Australian and 7 News. No one else covers this game, apparently… Loading Wilson drops a bombshell to start things off: “The AFL is auditing third-party player payments at the Geelong Football Club.” Hutchison claims the story will “rock the Cats on the eve of the season”, though Wilson, a far more measured newshound, demurs. “If there was any rocking done it happened a while ago”. She also refers to a story in The Age last December that touched on some of this. “Is this historical or is it current?” asks Cornes. “It’s both,” she says.

Such audits happen regularly, but the focus on Geelong gives it an edge. Throughout the show, Wilson’s inside knowledge gives proceedings a seriously newsy feel, though her take isn’t always endorsed by her fellow panellists. Riewoldt takes particular issue with her editorialising (Caro’s Call) about the tendency of St Kilda president Andrew Bassat to complain, and to take sprays at rival clubs. And Wilson takes issue at Cornes’ tendency to paint himself as the misunderstood sage, mocked by all. To be fair, Riewoldt does give the poor fella reason to feel aggrieved when he calls him out for a dish on Nick Daicos having an 80-day break. “This might be your worst take of the year, in opening round,” says Riewoldt. “You’ve gone early.” This is a new line-up, and it’s hard to gauge if the mix is going to work or not. The vibe is at times fractious. Riewoldt and Wilson are clearly going to have their differences, but there’s mutual respect there. Cornes? He’s like an annoying thing on the ball of your foot, though it’s a role he seems to have willingly embraced. Hutchison is just trying to keep it from crashing off the rails. It might turn out to be train-wreck TV. But that could be all the more reason to watch. Score: B-

Footy Classified, Nine* The Footy Classified Panel on Monday night. Starting later than the other shows, and with less unfettered access to game footage, poses both problems and advantages for Nine’s entry in the field. It opens with two news breaks, neither of which has cropped up on the other three shows: Christian Petracca moving management teams (a story broken by this masthead) and news from Nine’s Tom Morris that Brad Scott is about to sign a new deal with Essendon. The business of footy is this show’s business, as much as the footy itself.

Age journalist Sam McClure hosts, with journalist Damian Barrett and former players Jimmy Bartel and Matthew Lloyd. And the energy between them is the best on offer in any of the shows this night. Loading They cover the same incidents as the others have – with only two games to pick over, there’s a dearth of talking points to choose from – before McClure offers a Dorothy Dixer to Barrett on the matter of Justin Longmuir at Fremantle and Luke Beveridge at the Bulldogs. “Isn’t there a world where their two futures are linked,” he says, and Barrett is off on a segment about the intricacy of contract negotiations, and the importance of personal connections. It’s well set up and well explained. McClure is an ebullient frontman, who keeps things moving at a clip, and his co-hosts each bring a different kind of specialist knowledge (though Bartel is the least comfortable performer by a long shot).

Loading Lloyd’s Sledgehammer segment, in which he tackles a bunch of talking points from the weekend’s games, makes great use of very limited game footage, and in Good Call/Bad Call they rattle through a bunch of propositions for primarily comedic effect. They take aim – as did The Agenda Setters – at a pretty tepid Fox Footy ad in which a host of players and commentators attempted a rap, and they land a good-natured jab on Seven having spent big on its new line-up, with a snippet of footage from Friday night’s game in which Kane Cornes can be seen sitting on a step. “They had no money left to get him a seat,” someone says. Maybe it’s a mark of my exhaustion, but it strikes me as the funniest moment I’ve seen across four hours of footy shows. This one I’d come back to for insight and entertainment, a combo that’s much harder to pull off than you’d think. Score: B+

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