• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 4 hours ago

If you were contemplating making a lifetime commitment to joining an Amish community, wouldn’t you at least take a few minutes to look up the subject on the internet to learn more?

That’s the step six non-Amish people apparently forgot before showing up in Pennsylvania Amish country to take up the Amish lifestyle for a new reality series premiering this week on TLC.

In the new Amish-recruiting reality show “Suddenly Amish,” the six are shocked at what they find. What? No electricity? No cell phones? No false eyelashes?

Yes, the Amish are not on board with cleavage or painted fingernails, which is something these clueless contestants could easily have found out before traveling all the way to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to audition for admittance into the Amish.

The Amish dress plainly in clothing they make themselves. And very generally speaking, they live off the grid, which includes getting around in horse carts, doing their laundry by hand and using outhouses with no plumbing. 

I thought everybody knew this, but I guess I was wrong. One thing I did not know before previewing Episode One of “Suddenly Amish” was that Amish communities are shrinking.

In the show, the situation is positioned as an existential crisis as increasing numbers of young Amish are leaving their communities for life in the outside world.

And so, the Lancaster Amish have decided to try recruiting new members from the outside world, a population the Amish call “English.”

On the show, the prospective recruits -- three men and three women -- have come from Texas, California, Missouri, Michigan and New York to fulfill their dreams of trading the material world for Amish country.

They all have their reasons. They just don’t fit into the society of the outside world, or they are disillusioned or disappointed in aspect of their lives, or they are haunted by childhood traumas.

One of the refreshing things about the show is that the Amish they encounter when they first arrive couldn’t care less about all that.

It is either the Amish way or the highway. You don’t want to discard your false fingernails? Then hit the road. Not interested in dressing modestly? OK, how soon can you leave?

Upon encountering these six contestants for the first time, viewers might think they have stumbled onto a new edition of “Survivor,” based solely on the way the participants have been cast.

They are mostly in their late 20s or early 30s. One or more of the men wear backward hats, and one woman bares the aforementioned cleavage. 

Another woman is presented as so insecure about how she looks that the idea of going outside without makeup is something she cannot conceive of.

She is the one with the long, painted fingernails, which the Amish point out is not compatible with milking a cow. 

She has never milked a cow, and is shocked to find out that milking cows is something the Amish do every day. This information is not exactly a closely held secret the Amish keep from outsiders.

Though these would-be Amish look like they just parachuted in from “Survivor” or “Big Brother,” “Suddenly Amish” is not a reality-competition show with one aspirant eliminated each week at an Amish tribal council.

Instead, they are free to just quit on their own. And their Amish handlers are just as free to throw them off their property.

One of the puzzling aspects of “Suddenly Amish” and the other Amish docuseries that have come and gone over the years is how the Amish have allowed these outside TV crews into their closed communities in the first place.

On-location shoots are elaborate, with lighting set-ups, production tents, food tables, trucks and portable generators, since electricity is something the Amish do not have. 

And yet, the Amish allow these outsiders to come into their homes and barns to set up electrical equipment all over the place. Aspects of the Amish lifestyle evidently have loopholes in special circumstances.

It is also true that some Amish own trucks and do business with the outside, English world. They sell produce and homemade baked goods at farmers markets within driving distances from their settlements. 

Past Amish reality shows have included “Breaking Amish” (in which members sought to leave to seek a life elsewhere), “Return to Amish,” “Breaking Amish: L.A,” “Breaking Amish: Brave New World” and “Amish in the City.”

While watching Episode One of “Suddenly Amish,” the TV Blog tried mightily to generate sufficient interest and enthusiasm to root for these contestants and their supposed desires to take up the simple life. But the effort failed. 

Oh, well, that’s show biz, Amish style.

“Suddenly Amish” premieres on Tuesday, January 13, at 10 p.m. Eastern on TLC.