Tom and Ray Magliozzi, also know as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, from NPR’s “Car Talk,” try their hands at the small screen. “Click and Clack as the Wrench Turns” (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings) offers a cartoon comedy take on their radio personas. In the first two episodes, not made available for review, Click and Clack run for president, together, and then find their show “outsourced to cheaper foreign labor.” Even if you don’t laugh at their jokes, you know Ray and Tom will.

¢ Speaking of outsourcing, “Koppel: People’s Republic of Capitalism: Joined at the Hip” (9 p.m. Discovery, nightly through Saturday), the first of four reports on the Chinese economy on the eve of the Olympics, looks at the special and often painful interdependence of the Chinese and United States economies.

Ted Koppel visits a bustling Chinese factory, where lawnmower engines are made with dirt-cheap labor and then talks with the workers in Missouri who lost their jobs to Chinese competition.

He also visits with poorly paid Chinese workers who can’t afford any of the products they create, even those sold at “low, low prices” in the United States and Europe. He returns to one of those unemployed Missouri workers to find that she’s shopping at Wal-Mart, the gigantic U.S. retailer that probably forced her employer to move her job to China. She’s fully aware of the sad irony, but she can’t resist those low, low prices. And now that she’s out of work, she can’t afford to shop anywhere else.

¢ “Scare Tactics” (9 p.m., Sci Fi) returns for a third season with a new host, Tracy Morgan (“Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock”). For the record, the first two hosts were Shannen Doherty and Stephen Baldwin. Why doesn’t anybody stick around?

“Scare Tactics” asks people to invite friends to a candid-camera-style re-creation of a scene right out of a horror movie. Just when things get terrifying, a character tells the “victim” that he or she is on “Scare Tactics.”

In the first setup, a young woman thinks she’s been hired to answer the phones at a medical clinic. But then a very pregnant woman arrives and she needs help in a hurry. She seems to be carrying Satan’s baby. The climax of this situation is too silly, bloody and unbelievable to reveal. The scariest thing about this “Tactic” is that the victim was set up by her own mother, who tells us, “She always wanted to be on television.”

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ “Nova scienceNOW” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) looks at the first primate, an illegal alien turned expert in brain cancer and a resistant strain of bacteria found on Iraqi battlefields.

¢ “Biography” (8 p.m., Biography) profiles Eddie Murphy.

¢ A burglar targets the posh set on “CSI: NY” (9 p.m., CBS).

¢ Scheduled on “Primetime: Crime” (9 p.m., ABC): a kidnapping in Toledo.

¢ “Hot Dog Paradise” (9 p.m., Travel) takes to the road to find the perfect frank.

¢ “Martin Lawrence Presents 1st Amendment Stand-up” (9 p.m., Starz) enters its second season.

Cult choice

Teens dabble in sorcery with mixed results in the 1996 shocker “The Craft” (7:15 p.m., Cinemax), starring Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk and Neve Campbell.