The Amish are coming! The Amish are coming!

LOS ANGELES — There are still three days left in this summer’s press tour of upcoming TV programs, but I’m already declaring the UPN reality show “Amish in the City” the winner.

Judging from Tuesday’s Q&A session with principals from the program, it’s clear the nation’s television critics were both surprised and captivated by this show that, when we first heard of it, struck most of us as a reworking of CBS’ icky “Beverly Hillbillies” reality show idea, only with horse-and-buggy people.

“Amish in the City,” which begins at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday on UPN, follows the lives of five young persons as they move to Los Angeles and contemplate leaving their isolated, traditional religious communities behind.

The show’s producers put them up in a “Real World” house with six “city kids” from various walks of life. For two months they did various “Real World” things — go shopping, go to the beach, go to the clubs — while learning to get along with each other.

It sounds like pretty basic reality-show stuff … until you remember that half the house is Amish. And not just any Amish, but teenagers undergoing the traditional rite of rumspringa (a Pennsylvania Dutch word meaning “running around” or “running wild”).

During this period, which often begins when they are 16, many Amish are encouraged to leave their communities and experience the wider world. After an undetermined length of time, they either decide to remain on the outside or return to the fold and undergo the baptism that makes them Amish for life.

The producers of “Amish in the City” include Steven Cantor and Daniel Laikind. In 2002, they got a documentary on HBO called “Devil’s Playground” that showed Amish teens on rumspringa. Most of the subjects in the film did very little with their so-called rebellions other than get high, have sex and sleep off their hangovers, often in housing next to the communities where they grew up.

Under those conditions, it’s inevitable that most Amish teens would sooner or later long for the stability of home.

After “Devil’s Playground,” which took four years to make, Laikind and Kantor were ready to move on. The film’s critical success led to offers, but many were ideas for more projects involving the Amish. The producers turned all of those down, until they got a pitch from an unlikely source.

Jon Kroll, a reality-TV veteran who has worked on “Big Brother” and “The Amazing Race,” had seen “Devil’s Playground.” And like the filmmakers, he was left wondering the same what-if question: What if those kids had really gotten to experience life on the outside? Would they be so quick to run back to their homes?

“My feeling,” Kroll said, “was it would be a very interesting decision to make, even more interesting than it already is, if you were more informed about what the alternative was to the Amish way of life.”

To make the show, Kroll, Laikind and Cantor sent teams of producers across the country looking for young Amish who were already on rumspringa. The ones appearing on the show hailed from communities in Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri. Most had never been in an airplane before being transported to L.A. to make the show.

Two of the five were on hand for the press session, and both made it clear that they knew exactly what they were getting into.

Mose, a 24-year-old schoolteacher from Wisconsin, seems to be the most innocent of the Amish on the show. Bookish and deliberate, he also appears the most grounded and devout. He knows his Bible, in two languages, and is the resident expert on Amish belief and practice. It’s obvious he is taking this time of questioning his faith seriously, yet there’s clearly a bit of St. Peter in him.

“Ever since I have left the Amish, there have been so many thousands of people that have been curious about the Amish ways of life,” Mose said Tuesday. “I felt like I could be the person to teach America about how the Amish live.”

Ruth, the oldest girl among her 13 siblings, grew up near Ashland, Ohio. She just wanted out.

“The reason I wanted to do the show is because I have not had very much experience,” she said. “I had never seen the ocean or the beach or ever had an airplane ride.”

Indeed, the most moving scene of the show’s two-hour premiere is when Ruth sees the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

The producers hinted that “Amish in the City,” which will air over 10 weeks, leads to an extreme life makeover for at least one of the rumspringa kids involved.

On the flip side, the six city kids had no idea what they were signing up for. They were told it was an MTV-styled reality show being filmed in a lavish crib in the Hollywood Hills.

“There was a conscious decision not to inform the city young people about the nature of their roommates,” Kroll said, because “they could have researched it on the Internet … and they wouldn’t have had all the misconceptions that America has about Amish people.”

When their housemates show up at the door in their traditional garb, the city kids, of course, freak. That’s followed by some fairly predictable Martian-Earthling exchanges (“Are you guys attached to the whole Amish thing?” and “Is this where the stars live?”).

But even in the premiere you can tell that the gay club promoter, the party boy from Boston, the Topanga Canyon vegan and all the other “Real World” wannabes are going to be shaped as much by these devoutly religious questioners as the rumspringa Amish will be shaped by their worldly housemates.

Indeed, the two city kids appearing on Tuesday’s panel spoke with unbridled admiration for their plain-dress counterparts.

“I learned that I was a lot more judgmental than I thought I was,” said Ariel, the vegan from Topanga. “We’re all going through our own issues. We’re just different.”

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Related story: The Amish are coming!
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