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A little girl with a baby brother might posit that all babies are born boys, and then turn into girls, for instance. Or that houses fall down to Earth and then walk into position, using their legs. Engaging with what children are watching on television may be a good way for parents to help their youngsters learn more Credit: Alamy. Often, her programmes are designed as a conversation between the television and the children watching it.

She cites the start of the show, where a boat goes out of frame, then comes back in, then goes out of frame again. Here it is, coming back again.

Davenport is fascinated by the idea of accessing his audience through their own preoccupations and interests. Rock-collecting was a childhood hobby of his, while the obsessive washing is not about cleanliness but engaging with an activity that many young children find challenging: washing their faces and getting ready for bed.

Many parents worry about the television their children are watching but some studies show that the right kind of programming can have positive effects Credit: Alamy. It was a failsafe way to put my son to sleep.

When I tell him, Davenport sounds genuinely moved. This is what led him to approach the University of Sheffield during the development of Moon and Me.

Those working with the Teletubbies material seemed far more engaged than in their normal lessons — in one case a child who barely spoke and hardly took part in class activities returned their completed task asking for another one.

Having read about the work with Teletubbies, and becoming intrigued by the idea of child culture, he approached the researchers about doing a study to learn more about how contemporary children play with toy houses. Moon and Me is aimed at a broader age range than either Teletubbies or Night Garden. But if you want them to learn anything from it, you need to find ways of engaging that young audience. Children who were taught lessons using materials involving the Teletubbies were far more engaged than those without according to one study Credit: Getty Images.

Yamada-Rice joined together two large toy houses from the department store John Lewis, and fitted them with tiny cameras, pointed not at the children but at the toys within the houses. They then assembled a group of one-to-five-year-olds from different cultural backgrounds and set them loose on the toys, recording how the toys were moved, what the children were saying as they played with the characters and what voices they were giving them.

Another observation was how the children often had multiple scenarios occurring on different floors of the houses. I sit down with Tim Smith and watch an episode. Young children can become transfixed by television programmes that adults find utterly baffling Credit: Alamy. There are subtle lessons woven into the fabric of Moon and Me, such as the art of structuring a letter, and telling a story — core principles of early-years education — or Pepi Nana climbing into a tub, which rolls away, and then popping out of it again, which helps teach about object permanence.

His audience, he says, is pre-educational. From age two or three until they are five, children can follow simple plots, but not complex moral lessons, such as a bully getting his or her come-uppance at the end. Rather, these young children may try to emulate the bad behaviour. School-age children can cope with more complex plots and moral lessons. Talk about the difference between reality and make-believe.

Turn off the TV or other device if the program is something you believe your child should not see. Be a good example to your child by not watching too much TV or digital media yourself. Limit your own screen time. Be involved in other activities, especially reading. Read to your child.

Encourage play and exercise for your child. Plan other fun activities for your child, so he or she has choices instead of screen time. What makes for a good rewatch is an interesting thing to contemplate. What seems obvious from many of the shows mentioned above is that comedies are the perfect rewatching material.

A good comedy works on multiple levels; laughter lowers stress and releases positive hormones including dopamine, while the individual episodes of a sitcom, in particular, are less reliant on plot for their effect and don't lose so much when that is no longer a novelty: funny one-liners and comedic set-pieces seem to hold up to repeat viewing better than dramas that hang on suspense, like the question of a killer's identity in a whodunnit, or whether or not the couple in a romantic drama will finally get together.

Sitcoms also provide a static world, be it a workplace or a set of New York apartments, with characters who maintain a consistent personality that sees them acting to type regardless of the situations they find themselves in. Compare that with, say, the nerve-jangling Breaking Bad in which Walter White becomes increasingly erratic and unpredictable as the series progresses, and you begin to understand the calming appeal of a sure sitcom bet. The fact that comedy often places mood over plot also brings it into the sphere of "ambient TV", a term coined by New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka in a feature last year to describe the rise in our technologically-distracted age of "soothing, slow, and relatively monotonous" shows like Emily In Paris and Netflix's various forays into home-makeover shows.

Essentially, these are things to put on while you scroll social media or Whatsapp your friends. If you zone out for 10 minutes then don't worry, you didn't miss anything important. Neither ambient nor overtly comic, though undeniably very funny in parts, The Sopranos is one of a small number of outliers here. Its success as a rewatch most likely stems from its prestigious position as being widely considered the greatest TV series of all time; the fact it aired two decades ago, meaning many viewers will be watching for a second time but perhaps with little memory of what happens; and the snowball effect of virality — once it's established a lot of people are rewatching, it can be hard to resist joining in.

Meanwhile another drama from the same era which has been an anecdotally popular choice for rewatching over the past year is Aaron Sorkin's political soap The West Wing. That's likely because, with its idealised vision of a Democratic White House, it offered escapism of a very particular kind for liberals riding out the last days of the Trump era.

Genre aside, the anecdotal evidence that old TV is good for the soul is supported by a research paper by Jaye L Derrick, associate professor of social psychology at the University of Houston, in which she investigated the ways familiar fictional worlds help to restore self-control in individuals. In that paper she described the restorative nature of repeats as creating a sense of "social surrogacy", ie the kind of friends-by-proxy relationship Antoniou felt with Seinfeld's Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer.

With their static worlds, sitcoms like Seinfeld have a particularly calming appeal when it comes to rewatching Credit: Alamy. Through her studies, Derrick has come to the conclusion that self-control — or the energy needed to manage your impulses, emotions and behaviours in the face of new events — is key to what drives so many people back to old stories.

However Iain Jordan, a consultant in psychological medicine at Oxford University Hospitals, is more measured when it comes to discussing the benefits that rewatching TV can bring to the audience.

If you love royalist porn, this will be like a long, slow massage. The holiday setting is only half the magic of this one, which is really a whimsical story of two young people learning to come into their own. It has the power to lighten up even the grumpiest of Scrooges.

Oh, Dawson, isn't growing up tough? This new millennium teen drama that aired over on The WB laid the blueprint for many of the coming-of-age series that followed with its earnest portrayal of adolescence. Sure, the television adaptation of the movie adaptation of the book veers frequently into sentimentality, outright conservatism, and cheap melodrama, but it's these qualities that make it an essential piece of American television. High-school football serves as the perfect medium to explore the 21st-century American experience, and the qualities above are part of the deal.

With knockout performances from Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, it's almost too easy to get sucked into the Dillon Panthers' football life. Netflix gave Gilmore Girls the reboot treatment in —but before you watch the four-episode follow-up, you can catch up with the entire series that started it all. The show takes place in the quirky small town of Stars Hollow and features a dynamic supporting cast so fully fleshed, you'll feel like a local after your first hour.

When Lorelai and Rory slip into their rapid-fire banter, it's like slipping on your favorite robe, familiar and exciting all at once.

For extra credit, the Gilmore Guys podcast dissects the series episode by episode, providing a more contemporary watercooler for your thoughts on a year-old show. Everyone wishes they had a crew like Joan, Lynn, Maya, and Toni. While we may not get the luxury of embracing Joan's maternal instincts or the opportunity to laugh at Maya's sassiness IRL, the warmth and the hilarity of the series and its characters including honorary girlfriend William from Mara Brock Akil Moesha , Being Mary Jane makes us feel like we're part of the bunch.

The beloved comedy, which was recently added to Netflix among other classic Black series , is a riot of a sitcom and an update to the format with its multidimensional Black women characters.

In this sneaky afterlife comedy from Mike Schur Parks and Recreation , Kristen Bell's deceased cretin Eleanor is erroneously given a berth in a Heaven-esque afterworld. Once the high-concept show gets past establishing its characters and premise, you'll enjoy watching her do whatever she can to avoid being found out and sent to the Bad Place, where she belongs, by her friendly neighborhood architect, Michael Ted Danson , including forcing her "soulmate," Chidi William Jackson Harper , to teach her everything there is about being a nice and good person.

The lives of Grace and Frankie are both turned upside down when the longtime frenemies learn that their husbands are leaving them Soon after learning of their husbands' infidelities, the two women form an unexpected bond with each other that's an absolute joy to watch on screen.

Of the culinary competition shows out there, GBBS known as The Great British Bake Off across the pond is the least cutthroat, most low-key you will ever have the pleasure of watching. Though the hosting lineup has changed—Mel and Sue have been replaced with Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas, and Mary Berry with Prue Lieth—the banter remains spirited and goofy, including some extra ribbing of the notoriously hard-to-impress Paul Hollywood.

The bakers develop such camaraderie over the season that when one of their pals leaves, everyone else cries. Imagine that! In a perfect world, this joke-a-second ABC sitcom about six neurotic best friends living in Chicago would have blossomed into a generation-defining, Friends -like hit. Instead, it was cancelled after three seasons.

Was it too weird? Too manic? Was the world just not ready for "Elisha Cuthbert, sitcom star"? Now is your chance to find out. Every once in a while, Twitter likes to reference iCarly as one of the main pipelines of irreverent millennial humor when people post clips of the series that scene of Spencer in the elevator with a llama being a common favorite.

It's easy to see why, considering the Nickelodeon show, about a teen who lives with her man-child brother and launches a successful web series, was one of the most ridiculous, yet actually funny, sitcoms tweens tuned into in the late aughts. With Nick being the goofier sibling to Disney Channel, the kids' show blasts off multiple oddball jokes a minute and has a whole crew of hysterical characters Carly's loud-mouthed BFF Sam, the smoothie shop guy T-Bo, their creepy No.

Whenever you feel like letting nostalgia wash over you, iCarly and all of its randomness is sure to be the show you grew up with to actually bring on the laughs. Yes, the title, the premise, the plot lines on this CW series are all ridiculous.

But it's a telenovela—it's supposed to be over the top. What's truly unbelievable about Jane is how many serious, controversial issues it makes palatable without moralizing ImmigrationReform.