“Frontline” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) departs from the headlines with “The Undertaking,” a documentary based on the essays of poet Thomas Lynch, who also happens to be a third-generation funeral director in a small city in Michigan. Like Lynch’s book “The Undertaking” (Norton, 1997), the film opens with the concise and powerful lines: “Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople. Another two or three dozen I take to the crematory to be burned … I sell caskets, burial vaults, and urns for the ashes … I am the only funeral director in town.”

Lynch describes and oversees his work with a businessman’s mind for detail and a poet’s eye for the profound. He describes in aching simplicity the role of the funeral process for the living and the dead, providing the survivors a means of saying goodbye to the departed and of pondering the mysteries of the abyss before returning to the routines of daily life.

Don’t go looking for the frisky melodramatics of “Six Feet Under” here. The film follows Lynch, his family and several clients, including the niece of an elderly cancer victim and the son of a 70-year-old who went from a healthy demeanor to the hospice and the grave in a matter of months.

But the film’s most astoundingly intimate and nearly unbearable scenes belong to a young, attractive couple making arrangements for their ailing 2-year-old, a blind little blue-eyed boy named Anthony who had been in death’s grasp from the moment of his birth.

Not for the faint of heart, “The Undertaking” is a moving film that viewers will not soon forget.

Still, this “Frontline” presentation lacks the power and moments of dark Irish humor in Lynch’s slender book. Lynch appears in this film almost as the character of an undertaker, wearing a costume and playing a ceremonial role. His book of essays is far more probing and personal, allowing access to his fears and resentments as well as dark, frequently funny observations about family, friends and neighbors as well as the practitioners of his trade.

¢ William Shatner narrates the six-part series “Mars Rising” (8 p.m., Science and Science HD), exploring efforts of NASA, the Russians and the European Space Agency to plan a manned trip to the red planet.

As Shatner explains in a notably low-key delivery, the trip is fraught with technical challenges and risks. The voyage could take years and ask explorers to spend months and years at a hostile Martian outpost. And what team could endure the periods of boredom and stress without cracking up?

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ A well-planted farmer on “Bones” (7 p.m., Fox).

¢ “Nova” (7 p.m., PBS, check local listings) looks at the rigors of running marathons.

¢ A question of memory on “House” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ Sam discovers that the devil disapproves of the irreverence of Halloween on “Reaper” (8 p.m., CW).

¢ Mike dabbles in Halloween special effects on “Dirty Jobs” (8 p.m., Discovery).

¢ Mare Winningham guest stars on “Boston Legal” (9 p.m., ABC).

¢ The adventure series “Everest: Beyond the Limit” (9 p.m., Discovery) enters a second season.

¢ The plastic-surgery comedy “Nip/Tuck” (9 p.m., FX) returns for a fifth season.

Cult choice

Linus risks humiliation to profess his deeply held beliefs in the 1966 holiday animated special “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (7 p.m., ABC).