The text of the paper first gives a brief consideration of the historical development of the impact of television in communist Czechoslovakia in the period 1953–1989. It presents, in this context, an overview of television serials with a pronounced orientation towards family issues, including linkages with upbringing. It considers educational features presented in serials as part of story development and their logical linkages to influencing and educating the recipient – the television viewer and citizen. Contexts of ideology, socialisation and propaganda are mentioned. The approach selected focuses on two stages in the production of family television serials which are clearly separated by the August invasion by the armies of Warsaw Pact countries – i.e. up to 1968 and then the following twenty years up until the Velvet Revolution. This part of the text comes to a close with a concise elaboration of changes and surviving stereotypes in family serials in the post-communist period. The following passages consider the analysis of sequences of feature films in history teaching in reference to the amount of time allocated to history education in Czech schools, the age peculiarities of pupils in the second level of primary school and the implications of these facts for analytic methods. The main passages are devoted to the application and implementation of selected requirements of media education in teaching with the use of film. The family television serial, whether from a specific historical period or belonging to the category “retro”, is a form of film which generally contains a number of temporal levels. The text of the paper considers the issue of the temporal levels of film and formulates a system of tasks supporting the goals of history teaching and media education. The film medium, using the example of the family serial, represents a suitable tool for interaction between the teacher and the pupil that stimulates the asking of questions, comparison and interpretation. The teacher and student are guided in this way to develop media literacy and historical thought.