WGN America got off to a strong start last year in its effort to build a national profile, introducing two decent scripted dramas, “Salem” and “Manhattan.” How does its latest series, “Wrestling With Death,” fit into the channel’s emergent strategy? Perfectly, if that strategy is “Let’s squander our tidbit of hard-won credibility by serving up a spectacularly idiotic reality show.”

“Wrestling With Death,” which begins on Tuesday night, is about a family of professional wrestlers in Osceola, Ark., the Lathams, who are also in the mortuary business. Pretty attention-getting combination, isn’t it? The excitement lasts about as long as it took you to read that sentence. Then you’re left with the sad fact that the Lathams, whether wrestling or embalming, are dull and do a lousy job of selling this as “reality.”

The show cuts between the two businesses with deliberate incongruity. One minute we’re being given somewhat ghoulish factoids about funeral preparation. (“A lot of times, especially the older people, when they get sick, their foreheads will sink in from losing weight. We have what we call feature-builder.”) The next we’re seeing the patriarch, LaFonce, or the matriarch, Sandra, or another family member body-slam someone in what looks to be a homemade ring in front of a small, barely enthusiastic crowd.

The Lathams may have many talents, but being convincing on camera isn’t one of them. Yes, it’s somewhat amusing watching Sandra smack her husband around because he supposedly put her on that night’s card without her knowledge. (A breast-cancer diagnosis, we’re told, had led her to retire from the ring.) But do we believe this was anything other than a staged-for-the-cameras dispute? No.