Treasures amidst the trash.(children television programs in Canada)

Television ... that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night--Ray Bradbury

If ever they defrost and re-animate the head of Walt Disney, it will be greeted by a long line of parents who wish to discuss his namesake network's "Tween" programming. Aimed at girls desperate for the day they'll stand around in a shopping mall and conspicuously adjust uncomfortable bra straps, the shows present the usual hip/flip/ironic/rock 'n' roll paradigm as the default position for junior high life. Which, alas, it probably is. Kids don't need the Disney channel to learn Hip; it's in the air, and kids ache to absorb it.

Parents grind their molars over TV's ability to make their children unhappy that they're 12 and a half instead of 13. But kids' programming today isn't all bad. Raw and banal as much of it is, this is also a golden age. Thank cable. Thank computers. And thank Canada.

Boomers had gentle Captain Kangaroo while they were spooning in their Maypo, then Annette and the Mousketeers after school, consumed with Tang and Lorna Doones. Kids growing up in the '70s mostly watched dreck pumped out by Hanna-Barbera. Cheap animation, banal stories, a stable of vocal talents that seemed to consist entirely of Casey Kasem and laugh tracks. The '80s weren't much better--the animation improved, thanks to the vast slave factories of Korean inkers, but the stories were merely loud kinetic inducements to buy action figures. Compared to the incomprehensible multiverse of the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh that arrived later, Ninja Turtles and Transformers may be sedate, but in their day: Oy! Such commotion.

Then came computers, cable, and Canada. Then came Olie.

Or, rather, "Rolie Polie Olie," the decade's best little kiddie show. Created by William Joyce, a children's author with a deft retro touch, the program (which debuted on Disney in 1999) follows a small robot boy and his family. There's stay-at-home Morn, also a drummer and crack bowler; Dad, a genial tinkerer with an indistinct profession; little sister Zowi; dog Spot; a yee-haw-by-jiminey Grandpa ...