Every ten years, like clockwork, we get a new version of “La grande séduction.” And every ten years, I review it and find something charming in this “Northern Exposure” tale of a dying village lying, cheating and manipulating its way into “seducing” a doctor to move there to help save the place.

The charms are always “slight,” and the first two versions of the film — a variation on the oft-repeated “small town comical conspiracy” formula perfected by “Whisky Galore!” — dragged a bit, and were 15 and 20 minutes longer than the latest.

But there’s something so resonant, so right about making this a Mexican tale, a tiny island fishing village that has lost its business to fish-packing plant competitors and its population to “The City” and the lure of Los Estados Unidos.

“The Great Seduction (La Gran Seducción)” is set on Santa Maria, a fishing island down to 120 residents and shrinking, a village so small and remote that an early scene has even the mayor moving his family to the mainland.

Everybody there is on government relief. Germán is cashing his check, his wife Maria’s and that of his late mother. And even cheating, they’re barely getting by.

Germán (Guillermo Villegas of “Where the Tracks End/El Último Vagón”) is our narrator, and as we meet him, his wife is moving to the mainland for a nursing job. But he won’t leave “our little slice of paradise” (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed into English).

Their long shot chance at saving the place is landing a fish-packing plant. No, their population isn’t big enough to run it, but they’ll worry about that later. Their biggest obstacle is that corporate won’t open a plant in a town without medical care. They need a doctor.

Events conspire to push Dr. Mateo Suarez (Pierre Louis) out of his job in a city hospital, “sentenced” to a month of looking after Santa Maria, which has been sending recruiting letters to every doctor in every major Mexican city’s phonebook.

The village, with Germán as ring leader and post-mistress Ana (Oscar nominee Yalitza Aparicio of “Roma”) as researcher, dives into tidying up, social-media “investigating” the doctor and plotting their strategy.

He’s into Los Cowboys, so they scramble to carve a ball, cut up watermelons to use as helmets and fake a game for him.

They talk gauche banker Benjamin (Julio Casado) into letting the doctor stay in his gaudy purple castillo of a mansion.

And they tap his phone. That’s how they learn about his fickle girlfriend, his disdain for a place with no cell service and his yen for Indian cuisine, prompting a quick Google search and a mad dash to whip up some facsimile of “Chicken Tika Masala!”

The lies pile up as bonding over fishing, “futbol Americano” and the like ties them to the doctor. And the many untreated illnesses touch him and make him feel needed.

The colorful cast of supporting players is a bit thin. The obnoxious nature of the manipulation is somewhat watered-down. And this version doesn’t get much at all out of the biggest lie of all, talking the most fetching single woman in town (Ana) into batting her eyes at the medico.

Director Celso R. García gets giggles out of efforts to troop the entire village from the cantina to the church and back again as they must convince the fish packer that they’re a bigger village than they are. Villegas mugs and narrates and amuses as a polished liar and cheat trying to pull off that one big score so that he won’t have to leave “our little slice of paradise” and can lure his wife back.

The third act’s turn towards “stop and watch the sunset” sentimentality works better in this film than I remember it playing in the first two.

But a small problem with the earlier versions becomes a bigger one here. Too many laughs or potential laughs are left on the table. The locals need to be larger-than-life colorful, the stunt-lies more outlandish, the doctor more cynical before he softens.

You want to retell this story with a little edge? Make Dr. Suarez a woman. Introduce a priest who’s not in on all the lying. Show more of the village’s “transformation” into a place worth living in instead of a ghost town in the making.

Maybe somebody’ll try that in 2033, the next time this “seduction” comes up for renewal.

Rating: TV-14, drinking, some profanity

Cast: Guillermo Villegas, Pierre Louis, Yalitza Aparicio, Eligio Meléndez and Julio Casado

Credits: Directed by Celso R. García, scripted by Luciana Herrara Caso and Celso R. García, based on the French-Canadian of the same title, scripted by Ken Scott. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34