Los Angeles ? Amish adventures will make it to television next week.

Two hour-long episodes of UPN’s controversial “Amish in the City,” are to premiere at 7 p.m. CDT Wednesday.

Five Amish move into a glitzy Hollywood Hills manse with six worldly young adults. The usual phony reality-show tensions ensue, augmented by a little us-versus-them stuff, but more often by the farm folks’ wonder at all the things they’ve never seen, and by the city kids’ amazement that the Amish aren’t that different.

The show is neither innovative nor particularly well-made. It has its emotional moments, scattered through the tedium like the occasional volunteer cornstalk in a field of oats.

The Amish volunteers were all already involved in the rite called “rumspringa,” during which they experiment with worldly ways before deciding whether to renounce their community, or, like the overwhelming majority, return to it. So, the show doesn’t insult the religion or its adherents, who generally come off better than their English (the Amish adjective for all modern folk) counterparts. Professional hand-wringers and amateur worrywarts can fix their attention elsewhere.

Hailing from Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, and all at least 20 years old (though they call themselves kids), Ruth, Jonas, Randy, Miriam and Mose can’t hold an oddball candle to Ariel, the vegan raised in Topanga Canyon, a hotbed of hippiedom less than 20 miles from the show’s home base.

Ariel calls eggs “chicken abortions” and milk “cow pus,” and she truly believes that cattle are from outer space.

Reese, a Hollywood fashionista of indeterminate sexuality, also comes from somewhere far beyond the nonelectrified farm.

Objections arose as soon as the notion was announced at the Television Critics Assn. gathering in January, and after that it seemed the network had abandoned the idea. Then, on July 8, the day the critics reconvened, news broke in the trade magazine Variety that taping was complete and that the show was scheduled.

As for the Amish participants, their inquisitiveness and whole-hearted determination to explore are inspiring.

Cast members of UPN's newest reality series, Amish

Upon seeing quality paintings for the first time at an L.A. art gallery, Ruth cries, overcome with emotion. Contemplating her first journey to the beach, she becomes, in the words of one roommate, a quivering “ball of happiness.”

Extremely rude to the Amish when they first appear, the English seem to lighten up quickly, especially after the newcomers ditch their distinctive threads.

The Amish aren’t the only fish out of water. Whitney, an 18-year-old black from South Central Los Angeles, is awestruck, surveying skyscrapers from a downtown rooftop.

“I’m like an Amish person myself,” she declares. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and I live here. That’s what I’m here for, to try new things and learn about different things.”

Even if it isn’t appointment TV, what could be so awful about a show that encourages young folks to do and say things like that?

The grousers who still haven’t stopped should take a lesson from Mose, encouraged by his new roommates to say grace before dinner.

“God bless all of us,” he prays. “Let us be ourselves and part as true friends.”

The impact on the Amish won’t be lasting, predicted Amish cultural historian Joseph Yoder, who’s Mennonite. But he can’t say the same for the TV audience.

“The Amish will survive this,” said Yoder. “They’re a strong Christian community and a few kids going astray and being lured by big money aren’t going to ruin them. But it will give a very false perception” to viewers.