When I think of TLC reality shows — which I try very hard not to do most of the time — I find myself wondering, Where on earth do they find these people? Are Alana, Chickadee, Sugar Bear and the recent addition to the Here Comes Honey Boo Boo household of a pig with painted toenails something secretly cooked up by some stoned Hollywood casting agents?

And do pigs actually have toenails?

From time to time, TLC interrupts its unending flow of insults to our intelligence with a legitimately interesting reality series, one you don’t have to watch the way you’d visit a carnival sideshow. It doesn’t always turn out well for the outlet formerly known as The Learning Channel: Last year’s All American Muslim, focusing on a community of Muslims living in Dearborn, Mich., elicited a sustained howl from deep thinkers who briefly took their eyes off Toddlers and Tiaras to complain that the new show somehow excused terrorists.

That shouldn’t be a problem with TLC’s newest series, Breaking Amish. Premiering Sunday night, the nine-episode season follows several young members of Amish and Mennonite communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio as they break away from their families and seek a more au courant existence in New York City.

The cast includes: Jeremiah, 32, an Amish man who wants to drive something with motorized horsepower, not just the horse that drags the family buggy around; Kate, 21, whose secret love of fashion and makeup would never meet with approval from her father, the Amish bishop; Abe, 22, who wants to marry an Amish girl but wants to see more of the world than would be afforded by the traditional Rumspringa, which gives young Amish a chance to taste the outside world briefly before returning home for good; Rebecca, 20, wants to be a model and fall in love; and Sabrina, who is of Italian and Puerto Rican descent, was adopted by a Mennonite family and has never fully felt part of her community.

Unlike other people their age, these young men and women could never just go to New York for a few years and come home for visits: Leaving their communities means they will be forever shunned if they come back. Doors will be locked to them, and even family members will turn their backs and refuse to speak to them.

Yet, while these communities are bound by tradition, religion and strict rules, even about clothing details, such as the width of a seam on a woman’s simple bonnet, they are not in any way ignorant of the so-called real world. The Amish, for example, tend to look at the family china cabinet as the repository for all kinds of objects representing their lives and hopes. At one point, Rebecca, who lives in Punxsutawney, Pa., stands in front of her family’s cabinet and sighs, “My dreams would never fit in this.”

While their parents probably never thought they had much of a choice about their lives, these young people believe they do, that their lives are their own to do with as they like. Many of them have little education — Abe, who dropped out of school after the eighth grade, says you “don’t need an education to move a piece of wood.” Jeremiah wants to visit New York because, other than a silo, he’s never been inside a tall building. One of the few ways of having fun is to jump up and down on trampolines, but that gets old even for people who don’t have much basis of comparison in the fun department.

Future episodes may exploit the whole hick-in-the-big-city thing, but one hopes that doesn’t happen to the point where we forget the courage these young men and women demonstrate to spread their wings. While all the young rebels have varying degrees of determination to chart their own courses in life, even the most resolute know they are very likely cutting themselves off from friends and family forever. That takes courage, regardless of how ill-advised we may think their personal rebellions to be.