Fat Albert was a ground breaking cartoon on many levels. It was one of the first, if not the first, nationally televised cartoon to feature an all Black cast, but it's appeal  reached across racial and cultural boundaries. Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids aired for 12 years before being syndicated, and you can still hear that "Hey, hey, HEY!" on Saturday mornings if you check around.

What was great about Fat Albert and his gang was that the situations they found themselves in and the issues they addressed were not Black situations or Black issues, everyone could relate. The lessons taught were just as meaningful to an Irish kid in the Bronx as they were to a kid in Chinatown.

There have been many cartoons since Fat Albert that featured racially diverse characters, but the new Nickelodeon cartoon, El Tigre, is, in some respect, like Fat Albert: Where the Cosby Kids are Black, the characters in El Tigre are all Hispanic. The Fat Albert gang's speech was lightly sprinkled with the urban-centric vernacular of the 70s, El Tigre's characters speak accented English laced with Spanish in places where what is said is obvious without translation.

Example: Manny's father, Roldolfo Rivera, walks in wearing vases instead of his Bronze Boots of Truth. Rodolfo greets his father, "Good Morning, Father."
Grandpapi Rivero, eying Roldolfo, says, "Buenos dias, Mejo. There is something different about you..."

(I guess you had to be there...)

The biggest similarities between the two shows, however, is how they both offer up life lessons disguised as fun. The Fat Albert cartoon addressed everything from being more accepting of differences, to study habits, to dealing with peer pressure. The writers of El Tigre appear to want to do the same thing, but the approach is totally different.

Fat Albert and crew dealt with life's issues amongst themselves and with Bill Cosby narrating the action. There was no violence and the humor was fairly tame. Still, at the end of the show a situation has been resolved and a lesson taught. Mr. Cosby's narration pretty much lays out what you should have learned, but you had fun anyway.

In the two-episode free iTunes Store download, Manny Rivero (aka El Tigre) steals his father's Bronze Boots of Truth (Sole of a Hero), and lies about what he did with the money his father gave him to buy guacamole (Night of the Living Guacamole). By the end of each episode Manny realizes the error of his ways and makes things right.

There's a lot of action crammed into the 10 minute episodes, so you really have to pay attention, but you walk away chuckling, never realizing that you've just been taught a lesson.

Like Fat Albert, I believe that El Tigre will appeal to everyone regardless of heritage. While embracing its ethnicity, El Tigre manages to entertain and teach, and in doing so, exposes us to cultures different than what we might be use to.

El Tigre is new, there are only 4 episodes, but if these are any indication of what's to come then all I can say is, "Viva El Tigre!"

In the Lifetime Network series, Blood Ties, an ex-cop turned private investigator stumbles upon an apparent murder. She, (Vicki Nelson) winds up hunting for the same cockney accented blood sucker as Henry, a mystery man who turns out to be a far more benign blood sucker.

The TV series is based on a series of books by Tanya Huff. That the series is on Lifetime and not SciFi should tell you the intended audience is women, and judging from this first episode, I'd say the intended audience would be pleased. Even so, I enjoyed watching. The dialog is witty, but not cutesy, the action, while nothing like what you might find in Blade, is enough to satisfy guys forced to watch with wives and girlfriends, and the acting isn't horrible.

Make no mistake, this is NOT Angel redone, though it could digress into an Angel wannabe if the writers are not careful, but I think it will find an audience easy enough.

More stuff for free at the iTunes Store: