The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

Skip it, and do not let the chronological toggle talk you into it. This sorts first because it starts when Indy is ten, and it is the least representative thing with the character's name on it.

It was built as a teaching instrument. Lucas wanted a history series, and the format is Indy at various ages crossing paths with notable figures of the early twentieth century: Picasso, Freud, Lawrence of Arabia, Edison. Each episode deposits him in a real event, and the tie-in materials came with documentary supplements. The ambition is real and the budget was enormous for television of the period, with location shooting across several continents.

What it is not is an adventure serial. There are no booby traps, very little treasure and long stretches of a young man learning something sobering about the world. The First World War material is genuinely bleak and is the best of it. The framing device with an elderly Indy was dropped, and the whole thing has been re-cut more than once into feature-length television films, which is why episode counts for it never agree.

Worth finding if you want to see Lucas spend a studio's money on educational television and largely get away with it. Worth nothing at all as preparation for the films, which assume no knowledge of it and contradict it in places.