‘North of North’ is all sunshine, even if set in an icy Arctic locale

Set in Canada’s northernmost territory among the Indigenous Inuit people, “North of North,” premiering Thursday on Netflix, is a charming small town comedy, with — as is so often the case in small town comedies — a generous portion of rom-com stirred in.

From the first episode, given its bright tone — this is the Arctic of long sunny days rather than endless dark nights — one senses that the long arc will be predictable in just the ways one wants it to be, but unpredictable enough in the short run to keep things interesting. Big feelings, turbulence and life-changing dilemmas abound, but most of all the show wants to make its people, and you, happy.

We are in Ice Cove — “think of the furthest place north you’ve ever been, now keep going, keep going,” says our heroine, Siaja (Anna Lambe), 26, “a modern Inuk woman, whatever that means,” who, as spring breaks on the still snow-packed tundra, has decided to change her life: She married “town golden boy” Ting (Kelly William), right out of high school and had a daughter with him, Bun (Keira Bell Cooper), now a hyperkinetic 7-year-old, and after years of coming third in her life, tells us, “I’m putting myself first.” We’re given just enough reasons not to like Ting, or at least to understand why Siaja has outgrown him, and to understand that, in this narrative arrangement, he is toast. (She: “I’ve been dying inside for a long time and you never noticed.” He: “You really think you can do better than me?” — to which, of course, the implicit answer is yes.) But she admits he’s a good father.

Siaja also labors in the shadow of her mother, Neevee (Maika Harper), a recovered alcoholic and former wild child, whom one citizen calls “slutty,” “shameless” and godless, but Siaja’s friend Colin (Bailey Poching) — Maori, gay — considers a “legend.” Neevee, who runs a general store, is tough but likable, and an excellent, playful grandmother to Bun. (“Want to help me sort bullets?” she asks.)

Like its protagonist(s), Ice Cove struggles; it’s the poorer cousin to a better-heeled community down the road (think Pawnee vis-à-vis Eagleton in “Parks & Recreation”) with which it’s competing to become the site of a new “polar research center.” This brings on to the stage Alistair (Jay Ryan), a white “Southerner” up from Ottawa, on a contract to assess the suitability of the location, and his assistant Kuuk (Braeden Clarke), obviously shaped as a potential new romantic interest for Siaja, who has broken up with Ting. (“Is he single now?” the single ladies of Ice Cove want to know.)

“I just feel like we’re all a bit starved for connection, you know,” she tells Kuuk on their first meeting at a spring festival — she is circulating a petition to extend the festival into year-round “cultural programming” — and we see from his face that, yes, he is a bit starved for connection himself. Less easy to see is that Alistair, ruggedly handsome in a way common to northern-set comedies, will turn out to be the father that Siaja has never met, and beyond knowing she had to have one, knew nothing about. (There is some comic inverse Oedipus in their first encounter — briefly icky, but dealt with maturely.) His return to a place to which he’d promise he’d never return means that he and Neevee have some things to talk about — cue secondary rom-com thread — when not avoiding talking about them.

After a one-day job hauling large objects to the dump, and an underwater vision of the sea goddess Nuliajuk (Tanya Tagaq), Siaja becomes an executive assistant to piece-o-work town manager Helen (a marvelous Mary Lynn Rajskub), unaware that Helen runs through assistants like I run through similes. A cheerful credit grabber, Helen identifies with the community and as a Northerner, in ways that are comically ironic, given that she’s white — though in some ways, she’s closer to it than Siaja, who speaks Inuktitut with difficulty and, apart from oddball friends Colin and purple-haired Millie (Zorga Qaunaq), can seem a stranger in her own home town.

“Thanks, but only white people can get away with drinking on the job,” Siaja demurs when Helen suggests champagne to celebrate her hiring.

“I love that you feel safe enough to make white people jokes around me,” says Helen.

Apart from the evolving love and family stuff, as Siaja, Neevee, Kuuk, Alistair and Ting get along like bumper cars, it’s as episodic a series as, say, “Northern Exposure.” Across the season’s eight episodes, there’s partying, search-partying, dancing, drinking, some random sex (meet the term “Eskihumper”), a sort of baseball, and a fire at the dump that locals attend like a pop concert.

Along with shining star Lambe (previously seen in “True Detective: Night Country”), creators Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, hail from the Nunavut, the territory where “North of North” is set. (That Susan Coyne, from “Slings & Arrows,” is an executive producer and writer, is a bonus, for credit-reading fans of that show.) Produced in conjunction with the CBC and the Aboriginal People’s Television Network, it bears some comparison to “Reservation Dogs” as a multigenerational comedy set among Indigenous people, filmed in the evocative right place and made by people who know the neighborhood.

“I see life and beauty everywhere,” says Siaja, who has never held a job, to express her qualifications for one. Not the least pleasure of “North of North” is seeing the world through her eyes.