Fans of Groening might well resist ‘Disenchantment’

“Gravity Falls,” aimed at a younger audience.

But the biggest factor — beyond Groening’s own evolution — is probably the Netflix effect.

It’s not that the company invented serialized seasons (see “Wiseguy” and “Lost”) or mandates a particular format (“Black Mirror”), but it has done more than anyone else to make that the norm — and the 10 episodes of “Disenchantment” follow a narrative structure unlike what Groening has been doing for the past 30 years.

It’s as if Groening and his colleagues held back, not wanting to pack in more gags or visual curlicues to avoid interfering with the story.

The story is both charming and familiar. Bean, the princess of Dreamland, is an entitled teenager with daddy issues who just wants to control her own life.

Like other rebellious young women in coming-of-age stories, but unlike most princesses, Bean acts out by drinking to excess and hooking up with Viking marauders and hot guys she picks up at donkey auctions. After an uncondoned party at the castle leads to a number of her father’s subjects being slaughtered, she’s packed off to a convent — Our Lady of Unlimited Chastity — for punishment.

Longtime Groening fans will have to reset their internal humor clock — the laughs here are gentler and more spread out.

The bigger adjustment, though, involves tone and emotion. “Disenchantment” is the first Groening series focused as much on making viewers sympathize with the characters as it is on making viewers laugh at them.

Ay caramba.