When my kids passed the Sesame Street-Mr. Rogers-Barney stage, I worried. What TV shows would I allow them to watch?

Not many. We don’t subscribe to cable so our options are limited to network TV, PBS, The Hallmark channel, and one sports channel. Of course, even watching NFL football is dangerous these days, with all the beer and Victoria’s Secret commercials.

And the so-called sit-coms are so loaded with sexual innuendo, outright sexuality, and trashy language that no parent in their right mind would allow their child to watch them.

We’ve pretty much given up on evening TV except for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and have turned to the family-friendly alternative: Netflix. Of course, you have to be careful when ordering G and PG-rated movies these days—even Disney movies rely on farting and belching jokes to garner laughs and keep kids’ attention.

But with Netflix, we can rent DVDs of truly family-friendly TV shows and movies. Our current favorite: Leave it to Beaver. I vaguely recall watching Leave it to Beaver when I was a little girl, but the first season (1957) predates my entrance into the world.

So for our entire family, Leave it to Beaver is a new experience. Surprisingly, the shows are extraordinarily well-written and laugh-out-loud funny. They’re not slapstick; they’re just pure, innocent fun. “The Beav” (age 8) and his big brother, Wally (age 14) preface almost every line with, “Gee, Dad…”

Beaver and Wally get into all sorts of pickles typical of most kids and try to talk their way out of trouble by covering up or (horror of horrors) lying to their parents. Wally’s “best friend,” Eddie Haskell, is the kid everybody hates to love. Always exceedingly nice to Mrs. Cleaver (“Gee Mrs. Cleaver, you look soooo nice today), Eddie regularly leads Wally and The Beav astray when the parents’ backs are turned.

Ward and June Cleaver are as straight-laced as they come. They sit together on the couch every evening, reading the newspaper and chatting (TV was a relatively new phenomenon in the late ‘50s, and I don’t think the Cleavers owned one). June is a busy homemaker, clacking around the kitchen in high heels (!). And get a load of her waistline and her perfectly-coiffed hairdo!

Whenever some mishap occurs (which is every episode), June turns to Ward and says, “Ward, I think you’d better go upstairs to the boys’ room and have a little talk with them.”

Ward, the dutiful husband and loving father, always obeys (we know who really wears the pants in the Cleaver family).

Jerry Mathers as The Beaver is as cute and innocent as can be, and Tony Dow as Wally must have had teenage girls everywhere swooning with his curly blonde hair and low-key nice-guy attitude.

My 10-year-old likes Beaver so much that he wrote an essay about “Jerry Mathers, My Hero” earlier this school year.

Yeah, the show is corny. But something about the characters, the plot, and the Cleaver family resonates with modern-day families in search of TV that’s wholesome and fun. As a family, we look forward to popping in the latest DVD and watching a couple of episodes (there are no commercials, either!) a couple of evenings per week. We’ve made it through Season 1 (6 DVDs) and are now embarking on Season 2. Only 194 episodes to go!

Readers, have you discovered any family-friendly shows or movies (no drinking, swearing, or sexual innuendo), either present or past? If so, please share the titles.