Everybody loves watching puppies.
Even other puppies (and their parents, too).
That's what Nickelodeon seems to be counting on with its new series, The Naked Brothers Band (Saturday, 8:30 p.m.), which debuted Feb. 3.
The young musicians who make up the group that gives the show its name brim with puppy playfulness and energy.
In the opening scene of a TV movie that set up the series last month, the band resembled nothing so much as a rambunctious litter, wrestling in the back of a stretch limo as they arrived for a concert.
The format of the series is mock rock doc, This Is Spinal Tap for the young'uns, focusing on fictional prepubescent superstars Nat and Alex Wolff.
Nat and Alex are real-life siblings, sons of thirtysomething co-star Polly Draper and her husband, jazz musician Michael Wolff. Draper is the show's creator and director. Wolff, resembling in no way a celebrated pianist and composer, plays the boys' dad, an accordion-squeezing wannabe musician of no discernible talent who looks like a taller version of Sonny Bono.
The young musicians are not naked, although the suggestive name may make young viewers snicker and parents squirm. The closest this irreproachably wholesome show comes to nakedness is Nat and Alex lounging around their room in T-shirts and skivvies.
The band got its name because Nat and Alex, the group's founding members, thought it up while they were naked, Alex informs us.
The operative word for Naked Brothers is cute. Most of the band members are 11, although electric bassist Rosalina, the group's only girl, is 13 and drummer Alex is 8.
The songs, written by Nat, are inoffensive kid fare, with titles like "Crazy Car" and "Motor Mouth."
The plotlines in the early going have been a little thin, as if the kids had been writing the whole show, not just the music. In the introductory movie, several of the band members bolt because Nat and Alex don't want to perform a song called "Boys Rule, Girls Drool."
That's not something middle-school sophisticates are likely to find entertaining, although the 7-to-10 age group may be charmed.
Naked Brothers is harmless family entertainment, as demanding as watching puppies romp.
How long even young audiences are willing to devote to watching these pups is the naked question.
Cartoon globe-trotter Franny Fantootsie is back for a second season on the PBS series Franny's Feet (WHYY TV12, 7:30 a.m. Sunday).
Franny is drawn in two-dimensional fashion so she looks at the audience straight-on, like Flat Stanley's animated cousin. She became a hit with the pre-school set last year.
PBS will air 13 new episodes, each consisting of an 11-minute story followed by an interactive segment. The season debut was Feb. 3.
Each episode begins in the shoe shop of Franny's grandpa. Whenever a customer drops off shoes for repair, Franny tries them on and is magically transported to a faraway place where she helps someone solve a problem.
In the season debut, she puts her feet in a pair of slippers that an Indian customer has left, asking to have them dyed the color of her sari.
Quicker than you can say Wizard of Oz, Franny finds herself in India, where she helps two squabbling sisters learn the value of compromising - a lesson any parent with more than one small child will always want to see reinforced.
After setting everything right, Franny whirls back to Grandpa's shop for a short instructional session. A lesson on shadow puppets follows the trip to India.
It's all pretty simple, if just a tad too precious, and seems likely to appeal to the youngest end of the 4-to-7 age range.
That group should find it, to borrow Franny's word, "fantabulous."