Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

On first blush, it’s a puzzler why The CW, home to superhero and contemporary teen and twentysomething stories, would have an interest in remaking 1970s family drama “The Waltons.” But think back to The CW’s forerunner, The WB, and “7th Heaven,” which also seemed like an outlier but would go on to become one of that network’s biggest hits.

Sometimes going against the programming grain is where networks find their greatest success (see also: “Ghosts” on CBS this season).

To be sure, this “Waltons” reboot has been done with an eye for modern viewers. Anachronistic scenes and dialogue abound.

Richard Thomas, who played John Boy Walton in the 1972-81 series, returns as the narrator for “The Waltons’ Homecoming” (8 p.m. Nov. 28, WPCW-TV), a rare CW made-for-TV movie that sets the stage for potential future movie installments or perhaps even a new “Waltons” series.

Set in 1933 and told through the eyes of 17-year-old John Boy (Logan Shroyer, who plays teenage Kevin on NBC’s “This is Us”), “The Waltons’ Homecoming” offers warm, big-hearted entertainment, ripe for mockery by cynics. But its simple focus on family will surely be a tonic for others. The main story is this: Will patriarch John Sr. (Ben Lawson), who’s been working out-of-town, make it home for Christmas with his wife, Olivia (Bellamy Young, “Scandal”), and children?

While the simplistic story hearkens back to TV’s bygone era, writer Jim Strain (“Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings”) imbues “Homecoming” with a slew of anachronistic touches that are sure to polarize viewers: Some will connect to these modern flourishes; others will scratch their heads over dialogue and sentiments that make little sense for the period.

“I don’t suppose I’ll ever get married unless they invent a man who doesn’t think he has to be the boss of me,” Mary Ellen (Marcelle LeBlanc) tells her mother. “I just don’t want to have to answer to anybody but myself.”

Olivia is friendly with a Black woman and decides the Waltons will attend Christmas Eve service at a Black church. “Homecoming” gestures towards racist attitudes of the era but its general attitude mirrors Olivia’s dialogue: “Sometimes change needs a shove. We didn’t raise you children to be sheep.”

In a recent virtual teleconference with reporters, executive producer Sam Haskell (“Christmas on the Square”) said he set out to make an inclusive film so “The Waltons” would be relevant today. (Watch for Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. singing “Silent Night” in a church scene.)

“I believe that everything that happened [in ‘Homecoming’] was possible,” Haskell said. “Going into the African-American church was something that had happened to John Boy in the original and we wanted to keep that because it was making a statement that … everyone is welcome in any of God’s houses. I don’t look at it as fantasy; I look at it as maybe the way it should have been.”

Fans of the ‘70s “Waltons” will notice the theme song remains the same but the house has changed (the original, located on the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, Calif., was torn down; the new movie filmed in Atlanta because of tax incentives).

“In the depression, there were a lot of people who were middle-class in the 1920s who lost everything, but they didn’t lose their homes,” Haskell said. “So I didn’t have any problem with having a two-story clapboard house that looks rather nice.”

Another change: Six Waltons children instead of the seven in the ‘70s series.

“The original book had eight children and when ‘The Waltons’ was conceived in 1971, they reduced it to seven. And we made the decision to reduce it to six because we had so many characters in this movie that we had to service, and we didn’t want to add another kid just to have him say, ‘Hey momma,’ or ‘When’s daddy coming home, momma,’” Haskell said. “It is my plan to bring Ben back if this were to go further.”

What remains true of the original and this reboot is a story centered on a family with an expressed religious faith.

Haskell said when he first met with The CW CEO Mark Pedowitz to pitch this reboot he was clear that “The Waltons” would still have a faith element.

“He embraced it completely and he feels, as I do, that putting faith and family and hope and joy front and center is something that this world needs right now,” Haskell said.

Thomas’ opening narration nods at today’s divisions along partisan political lines which he spoke about more explicitly in the virtual press conference.

“When we did the series originally, this country was very split,” Thomas said. “The line went right down the middle of the dinner table a lot of the time. And it was the beginning of the balkanization of viewing where the demographic would split within the household [because] there were more televisions. So one of the great things about the show is that it brought people together and young people could see a story about older people and older people could remember their childhood and the family could experience the thing as a whole.”

For Shroyer, who takes over the role of John Boy, it’s his second family-centered story following “This is Us.”

“Kevin on ‘This is Us’ has maybe more of a proclivity to being selfish, and that sort of skews him on the, ‘you love him, you hate him’ meter back and forth all the time,” Shroyer said. “John Boy is more of a servant to his family. He cares so much about his family and that’s obviously the conflict between his passion for writing and the man’s responsibility as it is in the 1930s.”

Thomas notes how John Boy was a revolutionary TV character when he played the role in the 1970s.

“John Boy was a very different kind of model for a male leading man in an American television series, this feeling-oriented [young man], the inwardness of John Boy, his delicacy of sensibility,” Thomas said. “These were very, very new qualities for a male character at the center of a beautiful ensemble.”

As for future TV productions with this new “Waltons” cast, Haskell is hopeful. He noted that The CW’s Pedowitz said in May that there are no more “one-shots,” when an investment is made in something, there’s always a possibility it can go further.

“I’m open to series, I’m open to additional movies,” Haskell said. “I believe so strongly in this. It was my favorite show as a kid and all through high school and the beginnings of college. … This one is something that I want more than anything. And I want people to see it and I want people to be touched by it. And I want people to love these characters again and to remember why they loved it the first time around.”

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