'Leave It to Beaver,' which ran from 1957 until 1963, was one of the strangest, sweetest, most distinctive domestic sitcoms of television's celebrated Golden Age.

Your humble critic confesses that he has been wrestling with 'weight issues' since leaving college lo these, uh, several years ago, so it's hard to be receptive to the moralistic scolding and patronizing encouragement offered endlessly by the allegedly well-meaning.

Revisiting 'Leave It to Beaver,' and seeing it in the pristine visual clarity of digital restoration, are mood-altering if not quite mind-altering experiences, very much for the better.

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