The producers of a highly rated British television programme that sends troubled teens to live with families abroad are looking for a Hong Kong family to participate in the show's third season.
The World's Strictest Parents, which airs on the BBC and is produced by Twenty Twenty Television, bills itself as a documentary-style programme on parenting and discipline. In each one-hour episode, two teenagers suffering from delinquency, alcoholism and drug abuse are sent to live with a 'conservative, educated, disciplined and loving' host family in an overseas country.
'We're looking for families that have strong moral values,' said Helen Crampton, the show's casting producer.
'Usually we find families that have children of their own who are quite respectful and do well at school. It's very hard to be prescriptive about what kind of families you want. Sometimes you just talk to one and get a sense that they would be right.'
In Hong Kong, Crampton is looking for an English-speaking Chinese family with teenage children. The family would instil 'the values and morality they demand of their own children' in the British teens, who would attend school, do homework, perform household chores and participate in family activities.
The idea, she says, is to help the teens grow past their problems by immersing them in a happy, functional family environment where rules are clear and boundaries are firmly enforced.
In the past two seasons, the show has featured families in countries as disparate as Belize, Ghana, Israel and South Africa. This would be the first episode filmed in East Asia.