Looks who’s back in the neighborhood: Latrobe, Pa.’s own Fred Rogers. The venerable and now venerated PBS children’s television host, who died in 2003, is the subject of the excellent movie, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’’ and of a forthcoming book, “The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers,’’ by Maxwell King.

I must confess that I always found the TV show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’’ to be pretty insipid. “Sesame Street’’ and Mr. Rogers were integral parts of my family’s life in the late 20th century, because you could plant small children in front of those shows while you read the newspaper and prepared to go to work. Millions of other parents did likewise.

Of course one watched with half an eye. “Sesame Street’’ looked like a lot of fun. The Jim Henson puppets — Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Bert and Ernie — were memorable, and the fast-paced show tripped right along. It “felt it needed to get the attention of children, so it used the methodology of commercial advertising,’’ according to King’s new book.

“Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood,’’ by contrast, was deliberately slow-paced. Rogers wasn’t scared of longueurs – he insisted the studio cameras follow the grains of fish food as they descended into his aquarium – and silence didn’t frighten him, either. He viewed his core audience as children slightly younger than “Sesame Street’s’’ legion of preschoolers and early elementary pupils.

Rogers was content to let “Sesame Street’’ do what it did well – provide basic instruction in the alphabet and numbers to young children. Rogers had a more ambitious agenda. He wanted to teach children how to live.

There were other obvious differences between the two shows. “Sesame Street’’ took place in urban America. Oscar the Grouch, enviably, lived in a trash can. One would be tempted to call Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood Midwestern, or Middle American. But with the benefit of hindsight, it looks like, well — a land of Make-Believe, which is what Rogers called it.

I found it impossible to relate to the wacky King Friday XIII, his niece, the saccharine Lady Aberlin, and the goody-goody puppets that seemed to be over-emoting 24/7. But Fred Rogers wasn’t programming for me. He was programming for the childhood imagination, and, sadly, I lost that many years ago.

“Sesame Street’’ and Mr. Rogers maintained a kind of peaceful coexistence. Rogers and “Sesame Street’’ cofounder Joan Ganz Cooney were careful not to criticize each other in public. “In private, Rogers was critical of ‘Sesame Street’ for being a fast-paced and anxiety-producing program,’’ King told me. “He felt if you attended to children’s social and emotional learning, the academics would come in due course.’’

At the end of Morgan Neville’s movie, Rogers’ widow, Joanne, remarks how fortunate it is that her husband didn’t live to see what contemporary America has become. I know I feel the same way about my parents and grandparents; thank God they never lived to see our country’s social degradation.

As Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote in Salon a few years ago: “One of the most radical figures of contemporary history never ran a country or led a battle. . . . He became a legend by wearing a cardigan and taking off his shoes.’’ Fred Rogers, she wrote, was “fearless enough to be kind.’’

I missed the boat on Mr. Rogers. I wish I had been listening, but I’d like to think that millions of children were. After seeing the movie and reading the book, I can only think: Where have you gone, Mr. Rogers? A nation turns its tortured heart to you, and now it’s too late.

Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @imalexbeamyrnot.