The mother of all juicy teen soaps is back. Who? Think the ‘90s, think zip code, think Beverly Hills ! Almost two decades since the original series first appeared, everybody (at least the producers) felt the need for a spin off. However, the popular television series which ran from 1990 to 2000 experienced a rather extreme makeover and, except for some now all grown-up familiar characters, everything will seem brand new in the show due to debut on September 2 on the CW network.

“Fans of the original show will be taken aback at first,” says Jennie Garth, returning to her Kelly Taylor persona, now a guidance counselor at West Beverly High and, moreover, a single mom.

Together with Kelly and good-humored counterman Nat (Joe E. Tata), Shannen Doherty also returns in the shoes of Brenda Walsh.

Although at first glance, the fresh “90210” does not appear to be all that different from the old series, the teen characters are worlds apart from the ‘90s youngsters of Beverly Hills . Taking the place of the Walshes of Minnesota are the Wilsons of Kansas, who move to Beverly Hills to take care of a modern alcoholic granny, Tabitha (Jessica Walter, famous for playing another drunken mommy, Lucille Bluth in “Arrested Development”). Like in the old times when Brenda and Brandon parked their Chevy Chevette in the high school lot next to BMWs and Porsches in the 1990 television series, other teenagers, Annie (Shenae Grimes of “Degrassi: The Next Generation”) and Dixon (Tristan Wilds of “The Wire”), go to school more preoccupied to fit in than to study.

It’s not just generational variety and mixture that keeps the ‘90s and the nowadays teens apart. The soap becomes more open, as nonwhite characters begin to emerge. Thus far, a few black students were to be seen on the corridors of the high. Now, Dixon is African-American and Navid Shirazi is an Iranian-American student impersonated by fine-looking Michael Steger.

Worlds change, teens stay the same. More fashioned and gussied up, the new Beverly Hills family will encounter the same old issues on the kids’ way to maturity, as no youngster can escape rivalries and friendships, relationships and breakups.

One question lingers, though: Is “90210” a brilliant move or a last-minute measure taken by a low-rated, hopeless network?