The Secret Show (Nicktoons)

This British import about an American spy named Victor and his British partner, Anita, is billed as Get Smart meets Monty Python, both shows I vaguely remember from my childhood. The show, which is quite retro in references and look, has several clever gambits. For instance, it is so secret that it always starts as The Fuzzy Bunny Show, which is then shanghaied by secret agents to reveal The Secret Show. Each episode, in turn, has several puzzles built into it, such as a spider that you can find Gold Bug-style, and a boss — a fey John Cleese manqué — whose name is changed daily to maintain mystery. After several watchings, I have to conclude that the show makes no sense — yet my son, Skuli, age three, loves it, in large part due to the laser guns, robots, giant slugs and funny spider.

Word Girl (PBSKidsGo)

Oddly enough, there is also a recurring fuzzy bunny joke in this crime-fighting comedy about a clever pre-teen girl. Her name is Becky Botsford, and her weapon is her huge vocabulary and her sidekick monkey named Huggy Face. Combining the righteous wit of Lisa Simpson (though none of the pathos) with the fun of doing a jumble, WordGirl is the most enjoyable of the offerings Babble sent me to review. While derivative in ways — one bad guy, for instance, Tobey Macalester, is like a slightly older Stewey from Family Guy — WordGirl is also unique. I especially like the TV game show part of each episode that tests viewers' vocabulary. (I especially disliked the annoying Pointer Sisters-sounding theme song.) This is one of those shows directed at both adults and kids, like The Simpsons (as opposed to Barney). By the time arch-enemy "the Butcher" finds his sausage cyclone(!) emasculated by the vegetarians, I was hooked. And Tobey Macalester controls a battalion of city-destroying robots so, yes, Skuli likes it too.

Bunnytown (Disney Channel)

Wait — more bunnies! This theme is reminding me of being a teen and my grandmother accidentally referring to Money Line as Bunny Line, causing me and my sister to become hysterical. (The phrase Fluffy Bunnies also hearkens to my post-college past, when it was slang for people who were into Wicca to be weird and feminist, but were, in fact, ignorant and silly.) Bunnytown is an alternate reality of British rabbit puppets with big blue noses who make music of all genres and perform mildly funny sketches in ornate multi-colored diorama sets. There is also a live action Laurel and Hardy silent comedy bit called "Red and Fred," which is even more strenuous and unwatchable than the rest of Bunnytown. Skuli sat through this, but I'm not sure that counts for much, as he will watch or eat anything brightly colored.

The Mr. Men Show (Cartoon Network)

The late British children's book author Roger Hargreaves created the Mr. Men and Little Miss series of characters — essentially, heads with appendages and a single personality trait — in the early 1970s, reportedly inspired by his young son asking him what a tickle looked like. The books have sold millions of copies and the trippy, funkily-scored TV series (which originally ran in the U.K. in the mid-nineties) is now stateside for our viewing pleasure. In the first new episodes I saw, many of the characters visit the hospital; in the second episode, a variety of characters descend on the mall. Mr. Scatterbrained stars in the mall story, thwarting Mr. Bounce's attempt to purchase size-six cowboy boots. Meanwhile, Mr. Persnickety steps into Mr. Messy's food shop and Mr. Stubborn goes the wrong way on the escalator. As dull as it sounds, it's actually funny.

Ni-Hao, Kai-lan (Nick Jr.)

Do they recycle all of the annoying voices on these kids' shows? I ask because Kai-lan, the "playful, adventurous" "bilingual" five-year-old protagonist of this show (debuting on Chinese New Year) sounds exactly like Blue from Blue's Clues. I like the idea of introducing Mandarin words and Chinese American values to my child in anticipation of China's becoming the new superpower, but I'm not sure this format is best. I had a hard time hearing the pronunciation of the few Chinese words in each episode, and the new vocabulary is not spelled out (phonetically or in any language), so I wasn't confident that I was saying the right thing. Ni-Hao did not hold my son's attention with its friendly exhortations to work well within a group. The creators of this show characterize it as "the next generation of preschool television programming" featuring "the psychology of biculturalism" — although, given that her friends are a monkey, a tiger and a "panda-loving" koala, perhaps it's introducing even more advanced themes.