BillMelendez

Like most people in the known universe, I grew up with Charlie Brown. In addition to watching all the TV specials, my family amassed a fairly large collection of the paperback Peanuts books and even a few nice hardcovers. Family friendly graphic novels, you might call them.

So I was pretty excited to learn that Warner Home Video was releasing a lot of the TV specials, both individually and in collections. On Oct. 20, the Peanuts 1970's Collection, Vol. 1 will hit store and cyber shelves in a 2-disc set. A nice publicist sent me an advance copy, so I'm happy to devote this week's Jane After Dark to this lovely set.

I'm always harping on all the sex and violence on TV right now -- often in shows that bill themselves as family friendly -- so it's really nice to have something you can watch with your kids that you know won't contain anything offensive or off-color. Not only that, the stories usually have a moral lesson, but they don't whack you over the head with it. It's more subtle, wrapped up in the humor and innocence of the stories and characters.