Q: What do you get if you take the footy and the smut out of The Footy Show? A: The Matty Johns Show.

Billy Slater's sledging and Des Hasler's aggressive Mormon impersonation have been dwarfed in the harbour city this week by speculation about how the popular Johns would go in his return to television, on Seven.

The long-running Channel Nine programme's biggest critic, the Daily Telegraph, printed a picture of Johns on its front page on Thursday and ran an extensive feature about the man who fell from grace so spectacularly just under a year ago when his role in a 2003 group sex incident was revealed in a ABC documentary. (That's Johns pictured above, incidentally, in his Reg Reagan days at Nine).

Now, it's hard to play television critic when you hardly ever watch the damn thing.

My tastes are clearly so far left, right, below and above the mainstream that I really have no idea what is good television, what makes popular television or whether something that is one of those can also be the other.

But I dare anyone to mount a rational argument for why the Footy Show is crap and the Matty Johns Show is better. There is very little difference between them.

Difference one: They talked about events they could not show because the Matty Johns Show does not have the rights to footage (will the Nine lawyers be on the phone on Friday over the few seconds of the Morris twins play-fighting?)

Difference two: The timeslot and Johns' personal circumstances meant every time there was an opportunity for a sexual pun - an FS staple - it was neatly sidestepped.

It would have been inconceivable a year ago to think Jason Stevens would get married and Matthew Johns would interview him on television and not ask him about the wedding night.

The best parts of the show, which like its "parent" ran well into the next hour and presumably took the ratings figure with it, were easy to identify.

Paul Kent's questioning of Willie Mason over why Sydney Roosters, basically, wanted him out of town was pretty compelling television. The North Queensland recruit tried to appear relaxed but seemed uneasy, although he was not actually asked if he had been a bad influence on the tricolours youngsters.

Unfortunately, Controversy Corner veteran Ferris Ashton's wish that the resurrected segment be "fair dinkum" was only partially realised. The two ex-players on the panel made Mason come out of the interview as the hero, with Kent portrayed as an aggressive crusader rather than a man asking questions any reasonable fan would like answered.

No-one trains former athletes as seemingly objective pundits as well as Nine - although Johns perhaps rejected the indoctrination process to an extent.

The second highlight was Johns making light of his alleged feud with his brother Andrew. An "agony aunt" letter was read out, supposed from their boys' parents, asking what to do about their falling-out. Panellist Jason Stevens advised the Johnses to "stick with Joey".

And at the end of the program, Matthew took a mock call from Andrew asking whether he could have a job at Seven. The objective observer would have been left wondering if the entire feud had been a publicity stunt.

As for the rest, it was Footy Show Lite. The skits were amusing enough, the contest where Nathan Hindmarsh and Eric Grothe went to a fan's house and then gave him all the answers to a quiz was nothing short of bizarre.

The references to Hasler and to the Panthers "tanking" were impressively current, considering the months of preparation that must have gone into this one episode. The spot where Andrew Ryan gave viewers a tour of Dubbo, with a script that rhymed for a while, was pretty weird.

I'm not going to critique each segment. As I said, I'm not a television writer. These days you can cobble together a bunch of old clips, throw in a countdown, interview your own on-payroll talent in between, and the entire country will watch it.

But may I suggest that if they can't show games, they take a tip from CNN and use still pictures of action while they're talking about it? May I also suggest they try and break some news, to throw some meat on some pretty brittle bones?

I don't know about you but if I get the chance in any given week to watch NRL On Fox, NRL Tactics or the Footy Show, I will. But I am not going to organise my day around them.

The best way I could sum up the Matty Johns Show is that you are unlikely to feel any differently about it than you do about those other programmes.

But those shows can get away with a certain ambivalence from their audiences. This one is on free-to-air, in prime time.