There are ethical issues to consider when making documentaries about people who illegally leap from skyscrapers with parachutes. At what point does a fly-on-the-wall documentary crew become a devil-on-the-shoulder incentive to irresponsibility? Initially, on The Men Who Jump Off Buildings, I thought this ethical dilemma was mitigated by the fact the director was accompanying parachutist Dan Witchalls on his daredevil descents. Of course, I quickly figured out that that particular footage was from a helmet-mounted camera, not a helmet-mounted cameraman. For the most part, you see, film crews just like to watch.

It's some comfort then, to telly ethicists, that Witchalls himself has few scruples. Everything seems to turn out pretty rosily for him. Despite having a freakishly skinny head on top of a muscley body (making him look like a youthful Skeletor), he's blessed with a very patient and pretty Danish girlfriend to whom he white-lies, and a tubbier, more thoughtful and accident-prone sidekick called Ian Richardson. Richardson is smarter and more self-aware than Witchalls (Witchalls mocks his use of the word 'contextually' at one point; Richardson is lying in intensive care with shattered ribs at the time), but he is in awe of the other man's skill and fearlessness, allows himself be egged on by him and tolerates the nickname "Hippo" even though he winces every time it's used.

During the year and a half for which the camera crew follow them about, sneaking into the likes of the Barbican, Wembley Stadium or up Nelson's Column, Witchalls continuously emerges unscathed, while Richardson, like OJ Simpson in the Naked Gun movies, the commissioner in the Pink Panther movies or Wile E Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, continuously hits rocks and bounces off buildings, shattering bones and puncturing organs in the process. (All these events are thrillingly caught on head-camera.) Witchalls' response to such misery is chillingly stoical: he recalls a previous partner, Neil, who died in action, and recruits another sidekick called Julian. "Julian is the Hippo's replacement and the Hippo was Neil's replacement," he chuckles. "I'll have to line up Julian's replacement soon!"

The documentary makers love it. "With a one-in-six death rate, Dan is playing Russian roulette with his life!" says the narrator gleefully. Between scenes I can't help imagining them rubbing their hands, whispering crazed suggestions into Witchalls' ear and injecting pure adrenalin into his cold heart while he sleeps. Indeed, when Richardson, newly returned to base-jumping after shattering his leg at the base of a skyscraper eight months before, leans nervously over the edge of a cliff in Switzerland considering whether to jump, I assume it took all of the director's willpower to resist giving him a gentle push. (Richardson is soon injured again anyway.)

It's an age-old dynamic. In every housing estate in the country there's a mad kid who takes massive daredevil risks and a smart kid who whispers bad ideas in his ear. (In my estate, these kids grew up to be a developer and a banker respectively.) Even if they say nothing, the very presence of a camera crew has to be like having someone whispering bad ideas into your ear. Still, it's a very skilled camera crew and it is a thrilling documentary.

Those of you who complain that television is a reductive medium, let me point you to the following documentary title: Amish: The World's Squarest Teenagers. I am proud to say that it took a television executive to realise that a centuries-old, technology-shunning American religious community of a few hundred thousand people, were, in fact, nerds. Yes, that was their problem all along. This being established, and having seen the Revenge of the Nerds movies, Saved by the Bell and Footloose starring Kevin Bacon, the narrative trajectory seemed clear to me. The selected Amish teens, transplanted in all their unsophisticated glory from farmland Minnesota to sink estates in London, would in no time be seeing ladies' bosoms and making obligatory goggle-eyed "wowza!" faces, receiving makeovers, getting "jiggy with it", and causing some crusty old authority figure to have his comeuppance. At the very least I expected an entertainingly exploitative piece of conformist freak-pointing.

Well, it wasn't to be. Apart from a handful of concessions to sensationalism (a bearded Amish patriarch reads warnings from the bible at regular intervals throughout) Amish: The World's Squarest Teenagers was a nuanced look at what happens when two worlds collide. And guess what? The concept didn't even spring from the fevered cocaine-dreams of a gone-to-seed television producer. It comes from a real phenomenon amongst Amish communities: 'Rumspringa', a period when Amish teens are encouraged to experience the technologies and customs of the outside world before returning to the strictures of community life. It's in this spirit that the five of them head to London. And it's in this spirit that they hang out with local youngsters who endearingly try to impress them with tales of street crime, flashy video games, and sporadic outbreaks of street-dancing. They all seemed like good kids to me, interested in each other's lives and patient with each other's quirks. But at the end of it all, while the Londoners seemed won over by the Amish kids' ordered lifestyles, peaceful attitudes and singleness of purpose, the Amish seemed less impressed by the Londoners' aimless freedoms. (After one of the girls gets flamboyant nail extensions, an Amish girl says: "You couldn't milk a cow with those, it would kick you.") One way or another, the Amish hadn't un-squared themselves by the end of episode one. It's a gradual process, I suppose.

Saviours, Ross Whitaker's one-off documentary about St Saviour's boxing club on Dublin's Dorset Street run by John and Jimmy McCormack, had a partially literal, partially metaphorical title, and so didn't come with the burdens of expectation Amish: The World's Squarest Teenagers came with. If it had been made for Channel 4 it would probably have a misleading title like, Dublin: The World's Hardest City or Streetfighting! (In a Ring and According to Strict Rules) or Punchface: Men Who Like to be Punched in the Face. In fact there were no crazy expectations or set-ups as the camera crew sensitively captured a year in the boxing careers of Dean Murphy, a local kid making good, Abdul Hussein, a Ghanaian asylum seeker fighting to stay in the country, and the Olympic medal-winner and all-round star Darren Sutherland, who tragically killed himself last year. None of these young men was introduced to their opposites from the Amish community, or wore a helmet-mounted camera for their boxing bouts, and none of them were egged on by the presence of a camera crew. (Indeed, the film-makers' commitment to non-interference is such that occasionally their protagonists disappear for months on end.)

And so, despite essentially setting up a scenario in which John and Jimmy McCormack are offering respite from 'life on the street', the programme doesn't build to predictably neat Rocky-style conclusions, instead leaving with life going on and dreams still unfulfilled. Life's a bit messy that way, and as a result, so is good documentary-making.

pfreyne@tribune.ie