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Locked Up Abroad: Saddam’s Iraq 10 p.m., National Geographic
This series is both terrifying and amusing. It’s terrifying to hear tales of going to jail in a foreign country. The alienation and fear sound excruciating. And it’s amusing to watch the show’s re-creations, which are always a little kitschy and poorly acted. Tonight’s episode is about contractors who were held in a Baghdad prison in 1990, where they heard other inmates getting tortured to death.
Trapeze 8 p.m., TCM
Carol Reed directed a number of extraordinary movies, including “The Fallen Idol,’’ “The Third Man,’’ and “Oliver!’’ This one from 1956 is a not terribly extraordinary circus movie with a charged love triangle involving Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Gina Lollobrigida. It’s a strange mixture of heavy-handed metaphors, clichéd characters, subliminal sexuality, and circus atmosphere, as I recall, but it did set up Lancaster and Curtis for their spectacular work in “Sweet Smell of Success’’ in 1957.
Mythbusters 8 and 9 p.m., Discovery Channel
Duct tape. All rise.
Billy the Exterminator 10 p.m., A&E
As the squirrel’s lawyer, I object to the word pesky.
Property Virgins 8:30 p.m., HGTV
Until HG corrupted them.
True Blood 10 p.m., HBO
Want to enter my home, “True Blood’’?
The Real World: New Orleans 10 p.m., MTV
Make love, and war. That’s the “RW’’ slogan.
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