Parents' Guide

Saturday-morning TV is a succession of adaptations and rip-offs. From the classic Madeline children’s books to Jim Carrey’s movie The Mask to a new version of ‘toon feline Felix the Cat, TV is assiduously avoiding originality. Which doesn’t mean these and other new shows are terrible — why, some are even creatively nourishing. Here, a guide to help you select the good from the merely familiar.

TELEVISION
Hang Time(NBC, 10:30-11 a.m.; all times are Eastern daylight)
What It’s About: Same thing most of NBC’s Saturday live-action kids’ shows (Saved by the Bell: The New Class; California Dreams) are about: horny, ill-educated teenagers making corny jokes. Heavy emphasis on high school basketball, hence the title.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Unfortunately, yes. The cast is attractive and appealing well beyond the quality of the libidinous, tedious scripts.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: Gratuitous ogling of young flesh without any emotional content; sheer vapidity of dialogue.
Appropriate Ages: Well, none. But 10-year-olds will probably think it’s hip.

The Lion King’s Timon & Pumbaaa (CBS, 8:30-9 a.m.)
What It’s About: The beloved warthog and meerkat from Disney’s smash movie engage in cartoon misadventures, refining a sort of Abbott and Costello comedy-team timing. Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella reprise their movie voice work.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Probably the highest name recognition of any new kids’ show-try to keep the little ones away.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: Nothin’, really. This is one of the more pleasant surprises of the season: well drawn, well joked, well performed. I hate to add to Disney’s profits, but this is a quality show.
Appropriate Ages: 4 and up.

The Mask (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.)
What It’s About: What else? The Jim Carrey movie: Nebbishy guy turns into green-faced, zoot-suited, motormouthed superhero.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Undoubtedly. The movie was mega-popular, and while Carrey isn’t supplying the voice (Rob Paulsen does it), the show does a fair job of reproducing the film’s manic comedy pace.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: The Mask‘s tendency to make vulgar bodily-function cracks. Also be mindful of Carrey overload: By later this year, all three of Carrey’s hit movies (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber as well as The Mask) will be Saturday-morning cartoons. Also beware of Mask-like shows such as Earthworm Jim and Freakazoid! They’re addled, without much humor.
Appropriate Ages: 7 and up.

Masked Rider (Fox, 9-9:30 a.m.)
What It’s About: Alien teen Dex (T.J. Roberts) is sent to earth to save the planet from ”Emperor Draygon and the vicious Insectoids.” Dex has an alien pet, Ferbus, who looks like someone wearing a defective teddy-bear costume.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Lotsa action, bright colors, and loud dialogue — this garish no-brainer is a kid magnet. Unfortunately.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: The badly acted, time-wasting foolishness of it all. Masked Rider, in its amateurish live-action-superhero way, most resembles Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. No coincidence: They’re both made by the same production company (Saban Entertainment).
Appropriate Ages: 7 and up.

The New Adventures of Madeline (ABC, 8-8:30 a.m.)
What It’s About: You know — the little French girl in the orphanage, from the Ludwig Bemelmans books. Living in that tall house in Paris that was covered in vines, with 12 little girls in two straight lines.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Wee ones, to whom the books have been read, may. For others, this blandly spunky new Madeline, lacking much in the way of personality beyond a sunny disposition, will be tedious.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: Note the stiff, mediocre animation. See, it’s a good rule of thumb: If the cartoon is based on a book, read your kids the book instead.
Appropriate Ages: 4 and up.

Santo Bugito (CBS, 11:30 a.m.-noon)
What It’s About: Well, here’s something original — a cartoon series about a couple of ants who run a cantina on the Mexican border; the buzzing customers are various insects that include a termite artist named Eaton Woode.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Bugito comes from the folks who gave us Nickelodeon’s amiable Rugrats, so the faux-primitive animation will seem familiar. But the vague plotlessness, Spanish-language puns, and spoofs of things like the art world and hitman movies may sail over young heads.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: A show so clever yet so lacking in plot, it ends up boring its little audience.
Appropriate Ages: 9 and up.

The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat (CBS, 11-11:30 a.m.)
What It’s About: Felix hasn’t really been updated; he has just been tossed into a surreal cartoon world, to interact with shape-shifting characters in ridiculous sight-gag set pieces.
Will Kids Want to Watch It? Hard to say. The animation style is a deliberate throwback to ’30s and ’40s cartoons; will kids dig the homage? Mine didn’t.
What Parents Should Watch Out For: Some of the more loopily nightmarish creatures may disturb younger viewers.
Appropriate Ages: 5 and up.