Living with the Amish

The notoriously private Amish community opens its doors to a group of British teenagers in this six-part series by KEO films for Channel 4.

Living with the Amish follows eight British teenagers leaving their mobile phones, Facebook accounts and partying behind, as they head to Ohio to see if they can hack six weeks of hard work and simple living.

The British teens, from a range of backgrounds and with a range of typical teenage issues to work through, live with six different families among the local Amish community.

They swap their iPhones for hymn books.

Out go their modern clothing, in favour of faded dungarees and conservative Amish hats.

And their Xboxes and PlayStations are replaced by traditional pastimes such as blanket-stitching and making wooden toys.

The experience is a radical departure from the way teens live their lives in contemporary Britain, and requires a readjustment to a world of gas lamps, horses and carts, manual labour and daily communal hymn-singing.

Will the experience help them find God? Or, just as importantly, discover who they really are as individuals?

No Amish community has ever before offered to carry out an ‘Amish detox’ such as this.

The Amish families who are taking part in the series hope that it will reveal the advantages of a pure, uncluttered way of life.

Producers KEO films are at the sharp end of the documentary scene at the moment and it showed – Ed Cummings, The Telegraph