Before I reached the age of about 5, there were, as far as I knew, three shows on television: “Sesame Street,” “Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood,” and “The Electric Company.” If other children’s programming existed, I certainly wasn’t allowed to watch it. Thus, in my house, and I suspect many other liberal Manhattan households of the late 1970s, PBS commanded pretty much the entire share of the children’s entertainment market. Today, children’s television is a very different world, and there are dozens of newer, flashier shows competing for children’s attention, from “SpongeBob SquarePants” to “Zoey 101,” starring Britney Spears’s younger sister. And so, as I sat down this weekend to watch a preview episode from the 36th season of “Sesame Street,” which begins today, it was with some trepidation. Would the show seem hopelessly dated? Or had it caved to the demands of competition and joined the ranks of other children’s shows full of cloying characters, embarrassing jokes, slick pop-culture references, or, worst of all, treacly feel-good songs and skits a la “Barney and Friends”?

After watching a full episode of the program for the first time in more than 20 years, I can say this: “Sesame Street” is still a pretty good show.

Some things haven’t changed since I was a loyal viewer: The human adult cast members – Bob, Gordon, Luis, and Maria – are all still there, amazingly, looking a bit older but none the worse for wear. (One exception, of course, is Mr. Hooper, aka Mr. Looper, whose death in 1982 was something of a cultural touchstone for my generation.) The theme song is the same, and the Muppet characters of my day are still around, although they’ve been joined by a few newer characters, such as Elmo and Zoe.

There are some new thematic developments, as well. In light of the recent rise in childhood obesity, the show’s upcoming season has a new focus on healthy eating and exercise, with a number of skits and songs devoted to topics such as “eating your colors,” picking out fruits and vegetables in the market, and staying active. This theme is more successful in some scenes than in others. One obvious problem is the chronically binging character of Cookie Monster, who in one scene devours an enormous cookie bearing the letter of the day – G – pronouncing that the cookie is “Gigantic” and smells “Good,” while the words are spelled across the screen. Afterward, he is shown to have ballooned up to twice his size and is filled with remorse, moaning woefully that he feels “Gassy” (an admission that struck this viewer as Gratuitous and a bit Gross). Later, Cookie Monster raps a duet with hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, in which he clarifies that he eats not only cookies but a range of healthier options: “Me one healthy dude, ’cause me eat healthy food,” is the song’s chorus. Other skits on the topic of health, which feature a group of wisecracking vegetable Muppets, are more successful.

The show does contain a number of references to popular culture, but these are clearly not for the benefit of press-savvy youngsters, but rather for their parents – a wink to the adults who are watching along. At one point, the Count (eating a bowl of grapes instead of popcorn) says he’s going to watch his favorite show, “Six Feet Under” (a fairly adult-themed HBO drama). After the show’s real theme song plays, the program begins: It’s a shot under a dining-room table of three pairs of Muppet legs, which the Count dutifully counts. Another skit, “Donald Grump,” has one of Oscar the Grouch’s cohorts in an absurd orange wig. “His name is on every piece of trash in town,” says a grouchy Muppet, admiringly.

My largest complaint about the current version of “Sesame Street” is that the original characters have far less screen time than the newer ones. We see little of anxiety-ridden Bert, his naively curious counterpart Ernie, or the gleefully grumpy Oscar the Grouch, but far too much of the insipid Elmo, whose main character traits seem to be a constant need for affection and a love of giggling. While the older Muppets clearly have adult voices, even though they may portray children, Elmo has the sort of helium-induced high-pitched squeak one would expect to find in a cruddy cartoon. He is never shown in a scene with Ernie or Bert, but it seems likely that if he were, Bert would dismiss him as a moron – and rightly so.

Season 36 of “Sesame Street” begins today on PBS.