Nickelodeon sets up camp with the family of ‘For Better or Worse’

While camping has become a popular family pastime, its paucity of luxury can bring a family closer together--or drive them apart, screaming. It can be an experience filled with gentle fires, roasted marshmallows and cozy-warm family members--or a nightmare of bug bites, humidity, canned hash and separate tents.

With its typical optimistic determination, For Better or Worse: The Last Camping Trip, explores several potential camping adventures.

Based on the Lynn Johnston comic-strip characters, the first of six animated “For Better or Worse” shows has the family on a camping trip with a very unhappy Michael, who had hoped to spend his vacation at a friend’s cabin.

En route, the roof carrier flies open, sending their belongings packing, so to speak.

When the family arrives, tired and late to their campsite, the tent poles are missing and they are camped next to a railroad track. But where there’s worse, there’s also better in this half-hour special.

“For Better o r Worse : The Last Camping Trip,” Friday 7:35-8:05 p.m. the Disney Channel. For ages 4 and up.

MORE FAMILY SHOWS

Two children’s classics--Treasure Island and Ivanhoe will be shown Sunday, back to back on Nickelodeon. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” (2-3 p.m.) young Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map in a deceased sailor’s trunk and sets out to find the fortune and outwit Long John Silver. A medieval tale of chivalry in King Richard’s England, Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” (3-4 p.m.) is the story of a brave knight who tries to defend both his honor and that of the crown against the evil knights of the Baron. He also rescues his love, Rowena, from the baron’s dungeons. For ages 6-12.

Engaging, charming, sentimental and sweet, Norman Rockwell’s paintings collectively depicted Americans as the way most wanted to see themselves--until he let his brush capture their darker side, which is covered in Norman Rockwell: An American Portrait (Monday 6-7 p.m. Discovery Channel). For ages 12 and up.

A wildlife preserve’s summer director adopts three cygnets when the rest of the swan family is lost in a storm in The Wild Swans (Tuesday 1-2 p.m. the Disney Channel). The three swans spend the summer on the preserve’s waterways, where they meet the director’s friend Elsa and her pet seal, encounter a hungry fox and finally, fully grown, soar off to join a large flock of swans. For ages 6 and up.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers do their thing in Shall We Dance (Wednesday 7-9 a.m. AMC), a film that features Gershwin’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” For ages 8 and up.

Five Space Camp (Wednesday 10 a.m. Lifetime) teens and their instructor are accidentally launched into space aboard a space shuttle and must find a way to return to Earth. For ages 8 and up.

Susan Dey hosts Jennifer’s in Jail (9 p.m. Wednesday and 10 p.m. Saturday Lifetime), which explores female delinquency as it enters the lives of several girls who live it, examines how the judicial system handles the ordeal and discusses the reforms needed for the young offenders. For parents.