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Courtesy National Geographic Wild

Rebel Monkeys

Friendly Rating: All ages.

Safety Rating: Mostly safe, though first episode cliff-hanger could upset sensitive kids.

Quality Rating: What show is this, again?

Series premiere on the new Nat Geo Wild channel at 8 p.m.

The same folks that brought us the National Geographic Channel have brought us their new animal-focused channel, Nat Geo Wild. It actually launched on Monday, but I held off since none of the programming was new until tonight.

Rebel Monkeys is their first new series and it won’t beat, say, the latest Dancing With the Stars Results Sho-

Must stay focused on the monkeys.

The series looks at a troop of rhesus macaque monkeys that live in the Hindu temple in Jaipur, India. The temple is dedicated to the Hindu Monkey God Hanuman, so the monkeys are protected (unlike decent dancers on…). The problem is that when handouts at the temple run short, the monkeys just head on out to downtown Jaipur and start ransacking the local marketplaces and any apartments with windows open, scrambling over the rooftops and power wires as they like.

Kind of like Kate Gosselin dancing horribly and having a melt-down her second week and…

Okay, I’m annoyed that Shannon Doherty got sent home last night on Dancing With the Stars and Gosselin wasn’t even in the bottom two. Look, I’m no fan of Doherty’s, and it’s personal. The woman dissed my kid once (long story) and while I forgive and forget, you diss my kid, it’s going to take a while.

But the show is supposedly about dancing and Doherty wasn’t great, but, good Lord, Buzz Aldrin is a better dancer that Gosselin. You can’t do better than an 80-plus year-old stiff-as-a-board white guy, you deserve to go home. It’s just not right.

Anyway, what was I writing about? Oh. Monkeys. Actually, that was kind of the problem with the show – it wasn’t very good at holding my interest. The whole thing felt like an attempt at Meerkat Manor, but without the drama. Yes, one little guy gets the shock of his life after hitting the power wires too hard (and creating something of a cliff-hanger at the end of the first episode, so beware). But frankly, by that point, it’s hard to care.

The monkeys are not very nice critters and since they’re protected, it’s pretty hard to build up any suspense over the course of the show. Oooh, ahh, they might run out of food thanks to a drought – not when you see them stealing from market stands piled high with fruit. And just how did those cameras get into that apartment the critters trash without the owners getting annoyed? Apparently, the owners were there, absorbed in a TV show. Hmmmm.

Sounds about as set up as Dancing With the Stars (which is not really set up, either, but I’m annoyed).

Courtesy PBS

NOVA – Rat Attack!

Friendly Rating: All ages.

Safety Rating: Mostly safe, though could frighten sensitive children.

Quality Rating: Decidedly cool.

On PBS, check your local listings for times.

I don’t normally feature repeats, but while this NOVA episode was originally broadcast last year, it’s still pretty cool.

Not quite every 50 years, bazillions of rats go on the rampage in Mizoram, a remote state in India, causing famine and all kinds of misery. Turns out, it’s the flowering and fruiting of a unique species of bamboo that’s native to the area that gets the rats going. No, I’m not giving anything away.

Safety-wise, there are lots of shots of rat infestation and piles of dead rats, which might be problematic for sensitive kids. But other than that, it’s pretty straightforward and the gross factor could be fun for the upper elementary kids.

I don’t know why I liked this show so much. But the storytelling is compelling and while there is a spooky side, the scientists come to the rescue and show how learning about the causes of the attacks can lead to ways to prevent the damage from the rats. Which is cool.

Larry Miller and Lindsey Shaw, courtesy of ABC Family

10 Things I Hate About You

Friendly Rating: All ages.

Safety Rating: Talk about teen pregnancy, implied drug use in one scene.

Quality Rating: Mostly fun.

Second season premiere on ABC Family tonight at 8 p.m.

If Kat and Bianca and Padua High School and Patrick Verona all sound a little familiar, it’s because the series was based on the 1999 movie (starring Heath Ledger), which was based on the play The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare. As modern variations on the The Bard’s old themes go, the movie was fun and worked reasonably well.

The series is well past where the movie ended, but still has all the charm.

On the cautionary side, the girls’ Dad (Larry Miller) is all but obsessed with his girls getting pregnant and into other trouble, so there is some sex talk. But it’s in the context of being careful, even if the show is poking fun at Dad’s creative ways to warn his daughters. And there is one scene in the season premiere where Kat (Lindsey Shaw) and Patrick (Ethan Peck) consult with some kids in a smoky van. No one is actually seen smoking or… But we know who those kids are.

On the flip side, we also get a scene where one of those kids gets busted for smoking something. Better yet, for all Dad acts like a buffoon at times, when Kat screws up and gets herself suspended, she is punished. And when Dad finds out she lied, you know she is in deep, deep doo-doo. Way to be a parent, Dad.

The rest of the show is reasonably witty. Bianca is a pretty ditz, which is kind of the point – or should I say counterpoint – to her brainy, sardonic sister. But even if Bianca’s new boyfriend is a complete idiot, you get the idea pretty quickly that Bianca isn’t.

It’s not a perfect show, but I have to admit, I enjoy it.

Leon Thomas, III and Victoria Justice, courtesy Nickelodeon

Victorious

Friendly Rating: All ages.

Safety Rating: Not perfect, but almost there.

Quality Rating: Pretty good.

New Nickelodeon series premieres Saturday, March 27 at 9:30 p.m.

It’s nothing cutting edge, but it’s not entirely predictable, either. Young Tori (Victoria Justice) is your basic high school student at a normal high school. Her older sister Trina (Danielle Monet) goes to Hollywood Arts. On the night of the big showcase, Trina can’t perform, and so not to let down Trina’s partner Andre (Leon Thomas III), Tori gets pushed into performing instead and finds herself sucked into going to Hollywood Arts, as well.

Kind of a nice-kid cross between Fame, Glee (with plenty of singing and dancing – funny how that’s getting popular again) and other tweenie sit-coms on the tube, Victorious is mostly funny. Nobody is terribly out of place. The only character who really got on my nerves was Trina, although Tori’s new ventriloquist buddy Robbie (Matthew Bennett) is getting there.

I can’t say this is earth-shattering great TV, but it is something that the whole family can enjoy, although young teens who think they’re too old for the show might turn up their noses. Teens you can tell to get over it and have some sympathy for their younger sibs. Then enjoy the show.

Let’s Make A Deal

Friendly Rating: All ages

Safety Rating: The odd off-color joke and commercialism issues

Quality Rating: Still darned fun

On CBS, daytime, check your local listings.

When I was a kid, one of the benefits of being home sick was that you got to watch daytime TV – something I was reminded of while convalescing myself these past couple days.

Now, I wasn’t one for  the soaps, which were barely cleaner than they are today. But one of the shows I loved was Let’s Make A Deal – with all those crazy costumes and fabulous prizes.

Well, the show is back, this time with comedian Wayne Brady taking over for Monty Hall, who originated the show – and this week, Monty’s back, too.

If you’re worried about commercialism and greed, yeah, the show can be a little problematic. Nowadays, I find it more than a little annoying that the only women besides the contestants are the prize models. Feh.

But Brady manages to pull off his hosting duties in his own way and still keep the show true to what made it so fun when I was a kid. And whatever else Let’s Make A Deal is, it is fun. It’s wish fulfillment, perhaps. Risk-taking.

And if you get a sick kid at home, granted they have quite a few more viewing options than I did. But you can do worse that Let’s Make A Deal. And if you can’t take anymore Candyland, there is certainly a place for letting a sick kid watch TV for hours on end – an exception to the rules to make up for feeling lousy.

And speaking of, please pass the tissues. I’ve got some TV to watch, too.