Here’s a quaint notion. Take a rock dinosaur from the 1970s and document his “family life.” Interview his long-suffering wife and his cynical children and watch him fumble and fail at everyday chores. If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because you watched “The Osbournes,” a hit MTV show some years back.

Never afraid of an unoriginal idea, A&E presents “Gene Simmons Family Jewels” (9 p.m., A&E). The dialogue and subject matter is as vulgar and juvenile as the show’s title. Simmons, the face, or rather the tongue of the joke rock band KISS over the past few thousand years, drags himself through this documentary like a man condemned to rock-star purgatory.

He doesn’t so much act like a jaded rocker as a bored parody of a jaded rocker. Like some doomed ancient mariner, he’s trapped in a maelstrom of reality-TV cliches. His only escape from his bland McMansion and bored children is to attend the opening of a Hooters casino in Las Vegas. Once he’s in that well-documented den of ersatz sin, he takes part in the most hackneyed reality-TV event of all: the Las Vegas wedding. I seem to remember a whole A&E series dedicated to Vegas weddings. At least there were no Elvis imitators in sight.

But while poor, doomed Simmons remains a prisoner of his own tedious hedonism, we can always change the channel and leave Simmons to his own private hell.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Spelling bees can be murder on “Psyche” (7 p.m., NBC). NBC will re-air repeats.

¢ On two episodes of “Hell’s Kitchen” (Fox), a rash decision (7 p.m.), down to three (8 p.m.).

¢ Viggo Mortensen and Omar Sharif star in the 2004 adventure “Hildalgo” (7 p.m., AMC).

¢ Russell Crowe stars in the 2003 adaptation of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring tale “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” (7 p.m., FX).

¢ Items examined on “History Detectives” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) include a possible Cherokee bible and a slave’s banjo.

¢ A former centerfold invades a house of narcissists on “One Ocean View” (9 p.m., ABC).

¢ Student veterinarians treat neurotic parakeets, a German shepherd with a fungus problem and other ailments on “Pet Vets” (9 p.m., National Geographic).

¢ Chain-gang escapees become a musical sensation in the 2000 fable “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (8 p.m., IFC), the Coen brothers’ Depression-era adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey.”