Lassie

This was a really good show; it stayed true to the original series, but updated it in a million subtle ways. The main character was still called Timmy, but Corey Sevier played him as a modern kid who just happened to have a fantastic dog. The rest of the cast was solid too -- Susan Almgren as Mom, Walter Massey as Doc Stewart, Tod Fennel as Timmy's best friend, Nathalie Vansier as --gasp! -- Timmy's girlfriend, and Chip Chiupka as the tenderhearted junkyard guy. There was a lot of humour in the stories; the series dealt with a lot of issues a normal kid would face -- like bullies, school problems, social issues -- but when it did straight dog-adventure stories, it did them with a big wink to the old series. Timmy actually falls in a hole, and Lassie goes for help -- but not in a way you'd ever expect. There were a lot of animal stories -- Timmy's Mom is a vet -- and they usually took some pretty strange twists; a baby goose thought Lassie was its Mom; Timmy and Jeff tried to impress a girl by raising chickens, but Hank's hawk kept killing them; Nathalie lost a boa-constrictor; Timmy and his Mom mistook a bat-infestation for ghosts; and my all time favourite, only Lassie could communicate with the aliens responsible for a series of crop circles!