‘Veronica Mars’ beyond her years

I’m afraid I can’t join the chorus of praise for “Veronica Mars” (8 p.m., UPN), the freshman drama about a high school student (Kristen Bell) who moonlights as a private eye in her father’s (Enrico Colantoni) detective agency. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m always put off when teenagers look, act and dress like world-weary 35-year-olds. Tonight, Veronica’s precocity is pushed to new extremes when she shares a dance at her high school’s “’80s Night” prom with a much older police officer.

Tonight’s episode does feature one interesting story line. After Veronica helps a Russian mail-order bride track down her missing husband, she discovers that the foreign femme fatale had a very different reconciliation in mind.

  • “Frontline” (8 p.m., KTWU; 9 p.m., KCPT) goes behind the headlines to spend time with the 8th Cavalry’s Dog Company in south Baghdad in the 90-minute documentary “A Company of Soldiers.” The filming began three days before the battle for Fallujah last November. During the course of the film, the company responds to an urban bombing campaign, suffers several ambushes, loses a soldier and exchanges gunfire with insurgents, killing 24 enemy combatants.

Tonight’s other highlights

  • The top 12 women perform on “American Idol” (7 p.m., Fox).
  • Backstage drama at the local theater on “Gilmore Girls” (7 p.m., WB).

“Nova” (7 p.m., PBS) recalls the first flight across the English Channel

  • A major league crisis on “House” (8 p.m., Fox).
  • A serious accident for a very young driver on “Judging Amy” (9 p.m., CBS).
  • A colleague believed dead returns to testify against a hired assassin on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (9 p.m., NBC).
  • An arranged marriage ends badly on “NYPD Blue” (9 p.m., ABC).
  • “Real Sports” (9 p.m., HBO) profiles golfer Vijay Singh.
  • “Thunder in Guyana” on “Independent Lens” (10:30 p.m., KCPT; 4 a.m. Wednesday, KTWU) profiles Janet Rosenberg Jagan, a Chicago-born woman elected president of Guyana.