Rogers' longrunning PBS show (more than 900 episodes made between 1968 and 2001) was somewhat different from the fast-paced skits and animated segments of fellow PBS show Sesame Street and the activities, songs and games of our Play School. But it shared elements with both these excellent shows, made for a similar demographic, while forging its own path.

I was born in Chicago and spent my first three years there, and I'm told, I was a big fan of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, like so many other children. My parents, like some other adults, found it a bit slow and low-key and the puppet character of Henrietta Pussycat particularly annoying with her constant verbal tic of adding "meow" between almost every word in her simple sentences. Rogers' deliberate pace and wholesomeness made the show ripe for parody (Eddie Murphy had a recurring mock-children's-show segment, Mr Robinson's Neighborhood, on Saturday Night Live) but for its intended audience, it worked. However, its long-term effects have been somewhat controversial.

Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister who was also a musician and had training in child psychology, used television as his own form of ministry, though his focus was not on proselytising religion.

He didn't like the often loud, violent shows that passed for children's programming. Rogers went into television because, he said, "I hated it so, and I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen."

As the documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, currently screening, shows, Rogers was in his quiet way a revolutionary, albeit perhaps an unlikely one as a minister of religion and lifelong Republican. Rogers' plea before the Democratic chairman of the US Senate Subcommittee on Communications in 1969 helped ensure public television kept its funding. Later, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court that recording TV shows with a VCR should not be considered copyright infringement as families could watch programs like his together.

His show - on which he wrote, composed and played music, designed, produced, and performed - was intended, he said, "to help children through the modulations of life".

He tackled serious topics in a way that made them comprehensible to children such as death, divorce, war, people with disabilities and racism. In an era where white people sometimes poured bleach into public pools to force black people out, Rogers pointedly had African-American policeman character Officer Clemmons join him to dip their feet together in a small pool.

Rogers also dealt directly with children's feelings and concerns: one of his songs, What Do You Do With The Mad That You Feel? was about anger and how to control it. His show canvassed anxiety, loneliness and other feelings.

There was careful demarcation between the real world and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, ruled over by the pompous puppet character King Friday XIII (voiced, as were many of the puppets, by Rogers), where other lessons were quietly taught. One storyline had the king set up a wall with border guards to prevent change - he took it down only after messages of goodwill and peace from other characters were floated over.

Rogers has sometimes been criticised - for example, on Fox News and in The Wall Street Journal - as having helped produce a generation of lazy, egocentric and entitled young people with his emphasis on children being "special". Such criticism seems churlish and unfair, underestimating the more significant role of parents and other influences in shaping behaviour and character. Rogers was concerned with highlighting the inherent worth and dignity of every individual child, not building up unrealistic expectations or turning people into "snowflakes" to use a recent pejorative.

Rogers especially cared about “making goodness attractive in this next millennium" as he said in a PBS segment recorded late in his life. Another of his quotes: “Love is at the root at everything, all learning, all relationships, love or the lack of it.”

While, unsurprisingly, I don't consciously remember the show from my early childhood, watching the documentary and YouTube clips moved me deeply. Rogers' sincerity and sense of purpose in the lessons he taught strike a chord in me - following his example would make almost anyone a better person.

Rogers was about love and respect and curiosity and dealing with an often scary world. This is relevant to everybody, adults and children alike.  And when times are becoming  increasingly polarised and fraught, Rogers and his messages - including the dignity of all people - are worth seeking out and remembering.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? is now screening at Dendy Canberra.

Ron Cerabona is a Canberra Times arts writer