Boy Meets World finishes the journey it starts.

Girl Meets World never quite got the chance.

Does Boy Meets World feel like a museum piece now? Absolutely. The acting is occasionally hammy. The sets are flimsy. Time, space and school timetables seem to follow their own strange logic.

But the show has heart. More importantly, it trusts its audience.

That trust is what makes it so rare.

Where many children’s programmes tiptoe around difficult ideas, Boy Meets World charges straight at them. Puberty, grief, friendship, morality, family breakdown, growing political awareness. These are not issues the show gestures towards before retreating into safety. They are explored through humour, awkwardness and genuine emotional stakes.

The comedy disarms you. The writing does the rest.

It is remarkable how much weight the show carries with such basic production values. Spectacle is irrelevant when the characters feel real. A conversation between Cory and Mr Feeny lands harder than any elaborate set piece because the show is interested in what young people are thinking, not just how they behave.

That is the difference.

Television for younger audiences once assumed children could handle complexity. It trusted them to follow stories that were messy, imperfect and occasionally uncomfortable. Too much children’s television now assumes the opposite.

Looking back, Boy Meets World feels like part of a run of programmes that grew up alongside their viewers. Recess, Lizzie McGuire, The Story of Tracy Beaker. Shows that recognised childhood as a formative stage of life rather than a marketing demographic.

They allowed characters to fail, to change and to learn.

Flawed though it is, Boy Meets World remains deeply moving by its later seasons. Not because it is perfect, but because it understands something fundamental.

Young audiences do not need to be protected from complexity.

They need to be trusted with it.