Tuesday TV: Absurd Amish Series, Tigers

It makes some sense that there are so many series about the Amish on TV. The Amish themselves don’t use electricity and never see all the series that exploit them. After “Amish in the City,” there was “Amish Out of Order” on National Geographic and then “Breaking Amish,” which was the highest rated new series in TLC history.

Soon there will be a Lifetime movie “An Amish Murder” with Neve Campbell, following their actually tasteful “Amish Grace” a couple of years ago. And there are some Amish who are among the bad guys in the upcoming Cinemax series “Banshee.”

All that leads to tonight’s thoroughly outrageous and not believable for a second “Amish Mafia” (Discovery, 10:30 p.m.) which almost sounds like a rejected Weird Al Yankovic parody (no, he did “Amish Paradise”). In this one we’re supposed to believe there’s a bunch of plains clothes enforcers, a Godfather in a chin strap beard who bring a tighter security than you’d find in an old Italian neighborhood. It’s especially crazy when they announce that they started these gangs after the schoolhouse massacre — an event that everybody knows was marked by the instant forgiveness of the murderer.

Apparently somebody figured out some time ago that truth doesn’t matter a bit on reality TV. But this one goes way over the line.

Christmas is marked on “Hart of Dixie” (The CW, 8 p.m.), “New Girl” (Fox, 9 p.m.), “The Mindy Project” (Fox, 9 p.m.) and “Parenthood” (NBC, 10 p.m.).

It’s the second night of the super complicated new game show “Take It All” (NBC, 9 p.m.), based on the Yankee Swap gift exchange from “The Office” apparently.

“American Chopper” comes to an end with the conclusion of the two-night “Chopper Live” (Discovery, 9 p.m.) competition.

Network Christmas specials tonight include “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” (ABC, 8 p.m.) and “Mupets Christmas: Letters to Santa” (The CW, 9 p.m.).