Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

More a spiritual spin-off than a true sequel series, Hulu’s “How I Met Your Father” does a gender swap on the 2005-14 CBS comedy “How I Met Your Mother.”

Streaming Tuesday, “How I Met Your Father,” created by “This Is Us” veterans Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger and executive produced by “How I Met Your Mother” creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, introduces a whole new cast of characters led by the likable Hilary Duff as Sophie. Kim Cattrall (“Sex and the City”) narrates and plays the future version of Sophie in 2050, telling her son the story of how she met his father via a two-way TV and an Alexa-like device that still doesn’t understand what she’s saying.

Through the first four episodes made available for review it’s unclear if there are direct analogues to the original show: Sid (Suraj Sharma) and Hannah (Ashley Reyes), seem like they may or may not be a stable couple like Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) in the original. A lesbian divorcee (Tien Tran) may be this version’s single-and-ready-to-mingle scene-stealer in place of Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), a character who’s probably too problematic to be on TV now.

But it is easy to see how this show’s writers intend to set “How I Met Your Father” show apart.

While “How I Met Your Mother” pretty quickly set up Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) as the central couple, “How I Met Your Father” offers multiple possibilities for who Sophie will end up with: Maybe it will be Sophie’s Tinder date Ian (Daniel Augustin) or perhaps it will be Uber driver Jesse (Chris Lowell). There’s also a potential love interest in a character played by Josh Peck (“Drake Josh”) who doesn’t show up until the third episode.

With a greater number of options, “How I Met Your Father” follows other reboots that are more complex than the original program. Introducing more options sooner may also help “How I Met Your Father” avoid the much-loathed conclusion that greeted the finale of “How I Met Your Mother,” which killed off the belatedly-introduced mother (Cristin Miloti) so Ted and Robin could get together in the end despite many times over the series’ run realizing they were not right for one another.

Despite the updates, this new series certainly feels like a piece of its predecessor in the style of humor, laugh track and direction (Pamela Fryman, who directed almost every episode of “Mother” returns to helm “Father” episodes). The theme song is the same and there are other Easter eggs of varying size and scope.

Duff, formerly married to former Penguins player Mike Comrie, is the standout here, and while Lowell’s Jesse seems like the ideal “opposites attract” mate, Sophie’s simpatico nature with Augustin’s Ian also holds appeal as a rooting interest.

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