There is a brisk trade in reboots right now, but it can be a tricky concept to master. The past few months alone have seen the return of Dexter, Sex and the City and Gossip Girl, while next year promises new True Blood, Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Frasier. But for every Doctor Who or Queer Eye, in which a reboot becomes a reimagining, there’s a Gilmore Girls or, and I shudder at the memory, Supermarket Sweep. To get attention for reviving a classic is easy; to do it well is very hard indeed. Happily, The Wonder Years (Disney+) has been done with care and innovation, and taps into the nostalgic appeal of the original late 80s/early 90s sitcom, while carving out a new path. The original Wonder Years began in 1988 with a character called Kevin looking back on his glorious 1960s youth. This time, the story centres on the Williams family, and their life in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1968. Don Cheadle narrates as the adult Dean; young Dean is played by Elisha Williams, who is so good that he makes me question whether my preconceptions about child actors might be unfair, after all. Several reviews in the US have pointed out that if this employed a similar timeline as the original, we would be watching Dean look back wistfully at the 00s. I love a low-rise bootcut jean and a belly button piercing as much as anyone, but the 60s setting is far more handsome, and provides a social and cultural backdrop that nudges this above the usual sitcom fare. The Williams are a black family, which makes the prospect of a series that leans heavily on nostalgia far more interesting; the rose-tinted glasses through which a 12-year-old white boy might look at his youth in suburban Anytown are clearly going to be different from those of a 12-year-old black child in Alabama. Within moments, older Dean has set his middle-class family’s life in context: his father had already given him “the police talk” about how to behave around cops, politicians are exploiting racial divisions on a national stage, and white flight is taking white families out of the city centres. Dean’s older sister, Kim, wears a Black Panthers T-shirt and references Bobby Seale, co-founder and activist. The school system has only recently been desegregated, and in the first episode Dean, or “Black Jesus”, as his friend teases, decides to be “the great unifier”, pushing for his baseball team to play a team of white kids. Dean is an awkward, precocious child who is shorter than his best friend and is ashamed to wear thick glasses. He goes through the trials and tribulations that most adolescents are forced to endure. This is about education, bullying, friendship, first love, family and riding a bike moodily around town – and for the most part, it is delightful. Dean is in love with Keisa (Milan Ray), a tough girl who borrows his comic books. His older brother, Bruce, is fighting in Vietnam; Kim is finding her own political identity. As the youngest, he says, “all the good parts have been handed out”. All that’s left for Dean is to work out where he fits in or, perhaps more accurately, where it’s OK not to fit in. He calls himself “sheep number three”. Crucially, it’s funny, and has a winning, easy charm. It feels like the kind of comedy that trusts its audience with smart jokes. The humour is divided between young Dean’s wide-eyed wonder and youthful sensitivities, and the older Dean’s knowledge, as narrator, that when you are 12, the trivial stuff can seem insurmountable, and the things that really matter might fade into the background. It realises that viewers can handle the big ideas with the smaller ones, often at the same time. The test for any reboot is whether there is a point to it. Has it done something new with the name, rather than coasting on brand recognition? The answer, in this case, is an emphatic yes. It would have been simpler to have made another nostalgia-loving period piece, which doesn’t examine the idea in any meaningful way; instead, it balances its plates with care. Fans of the original may also wish to keep an eye out for the director’s name in the credits.