Boys 2 Men

COMING OF AGE IN APPALACHIA

Anyone who thinks life in small-town America is simple (a certain hotel heiress comes to mind) will find some hard evidence to the contrary in "Country Boys," the engrossing six-hour Frontline documentary by David Sutherland ("The Farmer's Wife"), airing from January 9 to 11 on PBS. Focusing on two troubled teenagers, Chris Johnson and Cody Perkins, coming of age in the hardscrabble hills of eastern Kentucky, Sutherland offers up an extraordinarily intimate portrait of poverty in America. Chris lives in an isolated trailer with his parents, who seem interested more in the monthly check he receives due to a learning disability than in helping him to overcome it. Meanwhile, Cody shakes off a hellish childhood (both parents committed suicide) and cobbles together a sturdy support system consisting of his adoring girlfriend, his storefront church, and his comically priggish stepgrandma. (He also fronts his own Christian death-metal band.) Sutherland says his biggest surprise in making the film was the extent to which cable TV and the Internet have given the rural poor a window on the outside world. "They're far more sophisticated about us than we are about them," he says. "Country Boys" should help even the score.

AARON GELL