When I heard that the folks on Long Island could become the subjects of a quirky TV documentary about men trying to survive without women for a week, I called my friend to get the story firsthand.

Martha has lived for 11 years on the island in Casco Bay, where she makes jewelry and has raised two sons by herself. She knows most of the town’s year-round residents, of course, since there are only about 200 or so of them out there. So I asked her what the islanders thought about the possibility of being picked for this TV reality series called “The Week the Women Went.”

“At this point, the women are all enthusiastic about it,” Martha told me. “Hey, they get a week’s vacation of out it, so why not?”

The program, which The Learning Channel is producing in partnership with the British Broadcasting Corp., is based on a TV series of the same name that was filmed last spring in the rural English village of Harby, Nottinghamshire. The idea was to see what would happen when 80 women were sent to an out-of-town resort hotel for a week, leaving the men of Harby, population 300, to deal with children and household duties while trying to keep the community from falling apart.

It didn’t, as the BBC viewers found out. The men did seem a bit hopeless and confused at first, according to the reviews I read. One hapless gent was shown trying to make spaghetti Bolognese with rice. Others were filmed buying fast food each night for the kids, some of whom were seen wearing the same clothing every day. In one scene, a 5-year-old girl asked her father what they were going to do all day, now that mummy was gone. The man, wearing a slightly desperate look, responded, “What are we doing? I don’t know. You’re the boss, the only woman in the house.”

And when the men gathered for a meeting at the town hall, without having thought to arrange for baby sitters, the proceedings turned chaotic as the children ran amok.

Otherwise, the televised social experiment resulted in no big disasters during the week the women went away from Harby.

Long Island is one of three little towns being considered for the American version of the show; the others are in Colorado and Illinois. If chosen – they’ll find out in Janaury – about 50 of its women will board the ferry in March, leaving the men to keep the island afloat in their absence.

I asked my friend if she thought Long Island would survive as well as Harby seemed to, or if the women would come back to find their homes disheveled beyond recognition, their children half-starved and dirty, and the men drifting aimlessly around the harbor in lobster boats.

Martha may not know anything about the character of those British men on the show, but she knows enough about the men who inhabit Long Island to predict they’d get along just fine without women around.

“On an island, people tend to be independent types anyway,” she said. “We all look out for one another here. I don’t think the men would have much of a problem.”

There could be a few complications to work out, however, since women do hold several important jobs on the island. The tax collector and town clerk is a woman, as are the postmaster and one of the three selectmen. The people who deliver mail are women, and so are the two teachers at the 11-pupil island school.

As for the domestic scene, however, the men should be quite capable of holding up their end of the bargain. A few are eager to try. At an informational meeting held on the island Wednesday, a TV production crew member asked if anyone had questions about “The Week the Women Went Away” project, and a man called out, “When do they leave?”

“The kids aren’t going to starve out here without women around,” Martha said. “The freezers are full of deer meat and lobsters. The men can cook, too. The last five or six chowder contests were won by men.”

Besides, the womenless men would have no choice but to fix meals for the kids and keep them entertained. There’s just one restaurant on the island, and that’s only open in the summer when the tourists show up. Even going out to see a movie in the evening is no simple matter for Long Islanders; it requires that they take the ferry to Portland and leave before the movie’s over so they can catch the last boat back.

“Some of the men might just drink more, since there’s no one telling them not to,” Martha said with laugh, “and the women might have to do some housecleaning when they get back, but I don’t think there’d be chaos. Everybody thinks the whole thing is funny – the men and the women.”

My friend said she wouldn’t mind being among the 50 women to enjoy an all-expenses-paid vacation off the island, even if there’s no spouse at home to miss her when she goes. But she thinks the TV people might actually have overlooked an even more provocative reality show than the one they’re planning.

“I think it would be much funnier if they filmed the women who leave,” she said. “By the end of the week together, we probably wouldn’t be speaking to one another.”