And the beat goes on: the mysterious heart

“The Mysterious Human Heart” is an engrossing and educational three-part PBS documentary about that central organ and all that can go wrong with it -- not in the sense that we most frequently use “heart,” as the symbol of love and fortitude, but the muscle itself, the thing that can be taken out of one person and put in another, adjusted like a carburetor, rebooted like a computer.

The first episode, which airs tonight, concerns the heart as a pump; the second (also tonight) as a timekeeper; the third (next Monday) as the Dorian Grey portrait of our fat-filled sedentary lifestyles, tucked out of sight and embodying all our bad habits. (Until one day. . . . )

Each part focuses on a few likable people whose tickers have for one reason or another threatened to quit -- in some cases, have quit temporarily -- and the TV drama of their situations is equal to anything you might find on “House” or “Grey’s Anatomy.” Well, more so, since they’re real people you don’t want to see die. (None die in the course of the series, you might like to know.)

The mystery disease, the sudden faint, the long-hidden condition bursting catastrophically to the surface, the raced-against clock -- the familiar elements of the TV medical narrative are present here, although the doctors are more understanding and less self-involved than their fictional counterparts. Indeed, the series is a paean to modern medicine, the amazing things it can do -- with unpredictable success, admittedly -- and the brilliant or simply caring professionals who wield the scalpels and work the machines.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the series was funded in part by Medtronic, the world’s largest medical technology company, and the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. The third major funder: Mars Inc., maker of Snickers, Combos and M&M;’s.

None of what medicine can accomplish in this regard is any more astonishing than the heart itself, which beats almost 100,000 times a day for years on end without so much as a coffee break.

And how do we treat it in return?

“Living in a highly industrial society appears to be dangerous to your health,” we are told. The American way of life is becoming an international form of death, as the architects of our fast-food nation take their wares global. We meet Latin American Muppets Lola and Pancho, who have been enlisted to make healthful eating fun for the next, increasingly periled generations, and good luck to them.

For what ultimately distinguishes the human heart from the heart that beats within the breast of a cat or an elephant -- whose hearts are not the subject of this series -- is the troublesome human brain it’s connected to. Both in the choices we make -- to smoke, to eat that fry, to sit instead of stir -- and in the unconscious stresses our mind exerts upon the body, we are the engineers of our early demise. There is such a thing as a “broken heart syndrome” -- Takotsubo cardiomyopathy to you -- in which emotional stress can actually stop the heart. I am loath to even entertain that idea out of fear I’ll bring it on.

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robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘The Mysterious Human Heart’

Where: KCET

When: 9 to 11 tonight

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)