The fictional Constance Billard School—Upper East Side academy of social-media influence, nonbinary sexual athleticism and bile—boasts a number of prominent alumni. Caroline Kennedy. The novelist Colson Whitehead. Supreme Court Justice Byron White. And Nate Archibald, whom one might presume to mean the former point guard and NBA Hall of Famer. One would be wrong.

Gossip Girl

Begins Thursday, HBO Max

The Nate Archibald cited in the newly rebooted “Gossip Girl”—as those in the know will know—was one of the more prominent characters in the original, which ran on the CW from 2007-12 and was a high-school soap with a new-media spin: The eponymous, anonymous narrator (voice of Kristen Bell ) was a social tattler with a blog that kept tabs on the ornate goings-on at Constance and served as its Proustian Page Six. Or, as someone in the new show “remembers,” an “Orwellian Big Sister.”

The revamped “GG,” with Ms. Bell’s voice returning omnisciently, cross-pollinates the show’s history with real history and people. It cites Hannah Horvath (the protagonist of “Girls”) as a literary reference. It frames the online prose stylings of certain characters in a comparative-lit context (“It’s like E.M. Forster got roofied by Dorothy Parker and Jacqueline Susann!”). One father recalls Alec Baldwin confiscating his cellphone on Parent-Teacher Night and not giving it back. The show straddles true and false as if it were astride a slippery English saddle. The jokes are often of a very sophisticated variety. Likewise, the sex.

Evan Mock, Thomas Doherty, Emily Alyn Lind, Eli Brown, Jordan Alexander, Savannah Smith and Zion Moreno

Evan Mock, Thomas Doherty, Emily Alyn Lind, Eli Brown, Jordan Alexander, Savannah Smith and Zion Moreno

Photo: HBO Max

Nate “Tiny” Archibald would not have fit in among the alabaster-hued student body of the original show, but that’s one thing about the reboot that’s changed for the better; both female leads are Black, for one thing. Less uplifting will be the level of debauchery and lack of visible education portrayed here. Homework? It takes a back seat to alcohol-and-ecstasy-fueled soirees in Dumbo and pyrotechnical fashion shows at the Park Avenue Armory aplenty.

The Queen Bee of Constance is Julien Calloway (the spectacular Jordan Alexander ) who, abetted by venomous sidekicks Luna La and Monet de Haan ( Zión Moreno and Savannah Smith), maintains a social stranglehold on a school where grades are manipulated and teachers are terrorized. The staff is impotent because the true lesson of Constance Billard is that education is unnecessary when you come from extreme wealth (which the students do, with a few dramatically necessary exceptions). Julien has created an empire of product endorsements, clothing, unearned sociopolitical clout and an Instagram following worth a fortune, but this is largely because she’s already rich and thus an object of worship. It’s all fantasy, of course. But even good sci-fi contains a kernel of truth.

Thomas Doherty and Evan Mock

Thomas Doherty and Evan Mock

Photo: HBO Max

The “gossip girls” of the new “Gossip Girl” are, in fact, the teachers—principally Kate Keller ( Tavi Gevinson, who attained her early prominence as a juvenile fashion blogger). Inveigling their way into the confidence of their charges, and collecting news tips from various vengeful parties, they publish the Kate-polished results on Instagram, instigating panic attacks at every level of Constance Billard. At one point, Black Cube, the Israeli corporate intelligence company that once worked for Harvey Weinstein, is brought in to ferret out the source of GG. The camp aspects of the show aren’t funny, but the excess often is.

Every mean-girl melodrama needs a new kid in town. The one here arrives from Buffalo, N.Y., with hopes, dreams and a Greyhound busload of emotional baggage. Beautiful, guileless Zoya (the radiant Whitney Peak) has come to Manhattan on the wings of a Constance Billard scholarship and the expectation of encountering the older sister she’s never met—Julien. During a break with Julien’s father ( Luke Kirby ), the girls’ mother had an affair and a baby with Zoya’s father ( Johnathan Fernandez ); she died in childbirth. What Zoya doesn’t know is that Julien arranged the scholarship through means of her own. What neither of their fathers know is what their daughters are up to. Ever.

Tavi Gevinson

Tavi Gevinson

Photo: HBO Max

But the men of “Gossip Girl” are almost uniformly inept, ineffectual and/or incessantly annoying. “I don’t like to stand out,” whines the boy with mauve hair, Aki (Evan Mock), whose thing with Audrey (the deftly comic Emily Alyn Lind ) is one of various romantic dumpster fires erupting at the school. Otto “Obie” Bergmann IV ( Eli Brown ) is set up as the electrifying heartthrob but is so underwritten he’s like a human brownout. Max Wolfe ( Thomas Doherty ), an utterly depraved, drug-sodden scion of some fortune or other, keeps trying to seduce a particularly hot gay teacher ( Jason Gotay ), but that probably sounds worse than it looks—no one in the cast is a plausible high-schooler; some of the actors playing teachers are younger than the ones playing students.

Created by one of the original series’ executive producers, Joshua Safran, “Gossip Girl” makes no pretense of hewing to any concrete universe, moral or otherwise. But the women in the show—and their relationships—often ring true. Even better, they’re entertaining. So are their witty asides, which indicate that someone’s gotten an education, if not at Constance Billard.