Villa Allegre was truly the vanguard of children's television programs. It proved a show could extol the importance of family, honor and even caring for the environment and do it in a bilingual format. Yes, the village may have looked a little dingy, but it showed even the poorest of villages possessed the ability or the RIGHT to be a happy place to live. I remember the children listening with rapturous wonder as the old man told his stories. I remember the short interludes illustrating how things in nature interact in harmony. The reason I remember this show is that my father worked for BCTV - Bilingual Children's Television Network. They produced Villa Allegre back in the early 70's. His boss was Dr. Rene Cardenas, a nice man from what I recall. What ticked me off about him though, was how my mother would baked many pumpkin pies around Thanksgiving and he would show up at our house and take most of them! Well - they were damn good pies. Anyway - Villa Allegre would be the only show I would let my child watch and not these "programs" which only program our children to buy lousy toys and demand sugary or salty crap to eat. Villa Allegre deserves a second chance at life on PBS, at least on DVD and not left to slowly fade into fuzzy distant memories.
Review of Villa Alegre
