Blending reality TV with a bit of ``rumspringa,'' the UPN network is launching a controversial new series this month centered on a group of Amish teens as they venture from their rural environs into the outside world.
Debuting July 28 with two consecutive hourlong episodes, ``Amish in the City'' will follow five Amish youth sharing an ultra-modern house in the Hollywood Hills with six young urbanites, the network said on Thursday.
UPN, a unit of Viacom Inc., drew criticism and a letter of protest from around 50 members of Congress when plans for the show were first unveiled in January.
They questioned whether the Amish, a conservative religious sect whose members live in closely knit rural settlements and reject the material trappings of modern life, including TV, would be held up to ridicule on the show.
Network executives insisted the Amish would be treated with the utmost respect. But no mention was made of the series at UPN's ``upfront'' presentation of new shows to advertisers in New York in May, leading to speculation that the network had quietly abandoned it -- until the premiere date was announced.
The 10-hour series was put together by New Line Television and two producers, Steven Cantor and Daniel Laikind, who were involved in making the celebrated Amish documentary ``Devil's Playground.''
That film, like UPN's upcoming reality series, explores the Amish rite of passage known as ``rumspringa,'' in which young people leave their communities, and the supervision of parents, to experience the outside world before deciding whether to remain with the sect as adults and become baptized.
Executives behind the UPN series said the show lacks any game show element or financial incentive for any of the Amish cast members to remain apart from their communities.
``Foremost in our minds as we went forward was to treat with the highest respect the young Amish people who were entering a world they had never before experienced,'' UPN Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff said in a statement.
According to details first published in Daily Variety, the youngsters on the series are shown working with mentally disabled people, attending a movie premiere, visiting the ocean and riding a helicopter to a resort island.