We were reading aloud James Herriot's Dog Stories (the dog anecdotes from a bunch of books collected into one volume) at bedtime for a while, but I had to pre-read all the stories because while MOST of the stories are soothing and charming, every so often there's horrific trauma and/or the dog dies, which is not great "last thing you think about before sleep" reading.

We've watched quite a bit of the original TV series from the 70s and like it quite well, but have not checked out the new one yet.