Yeah, I'd rather have a TMP-era Year Six than Year One. Get some of that generation-Matalas movie-era nostalgia pumping, plus it's more open-ended.I'm with you on that, actually! I'm a bit surprised that it isn't a "Years Four and Five", or (better yet), the post-TMP approach you mentioned. I guess Goldsman and Myers just really like the idea of moving straight from Strange New Worlds' series finale, and building further on Kirk's formative moments as captain. Which is all well and good. But still, haha.
On the other hand, they've done a surprisingly good job of recontextualizing TOS already; like I always say, if someone dumped me in a splashy song-and-dance number then decided they wanted to get back together, I'd throw their soup in the hallway, too. And as CLB points out, there's a lot of potential in an extremely direct TOS prequel, for those who dare greatly and aren't afraid of accusations of fannish blank-filling or slavish adherence to canon. But Andor show that's possible; it's braided tight to Rogue One and the rest of the Star Wars storytelling of that era, down to giving backstories for random props and costume pieces from the movie, and the common meme you hear is that it was so good because the people involved didn't care about referencing Star Wars, just because it didn't feel referential. Focusing tight on the early-installment weirdness of TOS's first episodes might be the very tack to take, doing "unexpected" things like putting Sulu in blue and Uhura and Spock in gold, or giving Kirk a dirtbag best friend who actually acts like the Kirk stereotype.