The spirit of Schulz is working for ‘Peanuts’ in new animated special

After a slow 10 years in the animated life of the “Peanuts” gang -- apart from a couple of direct-to-video adventures and a Super Bowl-themed one-off for NBC, Charlie Brown and his cartoon peers (were they ever really his pals?) were virtually on hiatus -- ABC last year set them to work again in new prime-time specials.

The latest edition is “I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!,” again, as always, the work of director-producer Bill Melendez (nearing 90 and still the voice of Snoopy) and executive producer Lee Mendelson, with the music of the late Vince Guaraldi back in place, albeit here played less swingingly by David Benoit. (The network also has stewardship over the holiday trifecta of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” and the half-hour that started it all, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which airs for the second time this season on Saturday.)

The presiding spirit is, of course, that of the also-late Charles Schulz, whose comic strips form the basis of the script. Indeed, the jokes unroll in four-panel beats, the punch lines often aphoristic, in that Schulzian way -- “Big sisters are the crabgrass in the lawn of life,” “Younger brothers learn to think fast,” “You can talk to the moon, but the sun won’t listen.” (Still working that last one out.) The gags line up like kids in a cafeteria, each saying its piece and moving on quickly to make room for the next.

The new special focuses on Rerun, the younger brother of Linus and Lucy -- a character who did not exist when “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired. (He made his animated debut in the 1976 “It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown” -- seriously.) He wants a dog. He deals with his strange siblings, whom he claims sometimes not to know. (“What would you do if I kicked those over?” Lucy asks of Rerun’s building blocks. “Probably nothing at the moment,” he responds, “but years from now, after you’re married, when you and your husband want me to co-sign a note so you can buy a new house, I’ll refuse.”)

Charlie Brown is more or less on the sidelines, neither the hero nor the goat; Linus likewise has little chance to philosophize. Snoopy, of course, gets a lot of screen time -- he is clearly the most fun, and easiest, to animate -- and is here joined by his brother Spike, visiting from Needles. “You’re as thin as a promise,” Lucy tells Spike, a wonderfully unexpected metaphor from the mouth of a cartoon second-grader.

Unlike “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” it is not a real Christmas story, though it is full of Christmas decoration and Christmas incident (snow, shopping, Snoopy dressed as Santa). It is also marginally more hectic than the former -- a bona fide classic, and a still-fresh and surprising marvel of concision and quietude, that has screened every Yuletide since it premiered in 1965 and has therefore colonized the cerebral cortex of nearly every American younger than 50.

“I Want a Dog, etc.,” by contrast, is merely the latest issue of a nearly 40-year franchise that includes a Saturday morning series and four feature films, and if it doesn’t aim for quite the spiritual beauty of that first Christmas special, it is nevertheless a sweet show, with a nicely handmade look and a homemade feel. As in “Peanuts” past, the voices are those of real children, many or all of them amateurs -- they lack the brutal cheeriness of the professional child actor and the knowingness of the adult who plays a child.

Big words are not always pronounced correctly, and the stresses in a line don’t always fall in the right place. The jokes sometimes fall flat, the way they do when kids tell them, and you should understand that I mean that as a good thing.

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‘I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!’

Where: ABC

When: 8-9 tonight

Rating: The network has rated the special TV-G (suitable for all ages).

Jimmy Bennett...Rerun

Adam Taylor Gordon...Charlie Brown

Ashley Rose Orr...Lucy

Corey Padnos...Linus

Hannah Leigh Dworkin...Sally

Nick Price...Schroeder

Jake Miner...Pig Pen, Franklin

Bill Melendez...Snoopy

Executive producer, Lee Mendelson. Directors, Bill Melendez and Larry Leichliter.