It's a Date, Thursday, ABC, 9pm

You know how sometimes you remember a thing as being a certain kind of thing, but when the thing comes back you find it's not quite the thing you remembered it being – and it's disappointing that your feeling about it isn't the same as it was? I'm worried that's happened for me with It's a Date. It's still good TV – very good, in fact – but it feels like there's something missing. The first season of Peter Helliar's collection of short films about the dating scene was fresh and full of terrific performances from some of our best comic talent. It's less fresh, of course – that's what happens when the second season of a series rolls around, that excitement of the new isn't there. The performances are still great, no complaints on that front. But there does seem to be something different about it, an emotional connection gone AWOL. From memory – and that's a pretty scratchy thing these days, so grains of salt and all that – the first series of It's a Date came from a more honest place than the first two episodes of this season. The humour in season one was top notch – even though so much of it was that excruciating, hard-to-bear cringe comedy I've so frequently whinged about – but there was also a germ of truth at the heart of each story that made the characters' actions real and gave the laughs a pathos and depth that lasted beyond the credits. That seems to be missing. In the opening episode ("Can set-up dates can ever work?"), Celia Pacquola is Cynth, a producer for Thunder FM radio comedy team Twattsie and The Pig. She's shanghaied into a tacky on-air segment and ends up on a forced date accompanied by sound crew and product placement. In the second story, single mother Jen (Kat Stewart) agrees to a set-up date but finds herself at dinner with a much (much, much, much) older man; not the fellow she thought she was going out with but his father (played by terrific character actor Roy Billing). The gags are good but it's hard to believe the characters in each plot line could end up where they do; the motivations just don't seem right. Same goes for the second episode, next week, which has an additional problem: Shaun Micallef. We love Micallef – LOVE him – but his performance as Hungarian Dracula actor Roland is so saturated with his idiosyncratic kookiness it wipes all truth off the screen. It was really nice to see you again, It's a Date, but I suspect we're not going to make it work this time around. Please don't be upset. It's not you, it's me.

Gordon Farrer

FREE TO AIR

Upper Middle Bogan, 8.30pm, ABC

One of the funniest comedies to premiere last year, Upper Middle Bogan is back for series two. Bess (Annie Maynard) is still coming to terms with being adopted and has developed a fear of abandonment. She is convinced her husband Danny (hello, Patrick Brammall) is leaving her when he's actually more interested in “passively cooling” their house during a heatwave (this sets up a great dig about, ahem, climate-based lies). Cut to the Wheelers as they crank up the air-conditioning and use industrial-sized fans to keep their cars cool. Upper Middle Bogan's strength is in its casting. Everyone – from Bess and Danny's awkward teenage son Oscar (Harrison Feldman) to Michala Banas' sweary Amber and the peerless, eyebrow-arching Robyn Nevin as Bess' mother Margaret – is cast perfectly and the writing (from series co-creator Robyn Butler) is spot-on and never condescending.

Drunk History, 8.55pm, SBS2

OK, I know this is supposed to be funny – “Look, it's people getting drunk! And they're talking about history and stuff. And that history is being performed by, like, real actors. Woooooo” – but it's just not. Watching Drunk History, a Comedy Central import from the US, is like being stuck next to the drunkest, most annoying person at a party when you're the designated driver. Despite reasonably well-known actors re-enacting the slurred stories – tonight's episode focuses on Hollywood and features Jack Black as Orson Welles, Tony Hale (Buster from Arrested Development) as Disney animator and Mickey Mouse creator Ub Iwerks and Nick Kroll (Parks and Recreation) as Ronald Reagan – it's pretty dull. Taxi!

Covert Affairs, 10pm, Seven

A better than average spy jaunt, Covert Affairs is not for the uninitiated. Tonight's story is so convoluted that if you have never seen it before – like me – you will be left scratching your head and start wondering if Annie (Piper Perabo) ever bumps into Homeland's Carrie Mathison in the CIA canteen. Tonight, Annie confirms that Colombian terrorist Teo Brago is the son of Arthur (Peter Gallagher, aka the best eyebrows in television). This has something to do with Henry (Gregory Itzin) and an oil company. Covert Affairs is slick and Perabo is strong as Annie. (And, on a side note, she actually wears flat shoes. A spy with practical footwear – marvellous!)

Louise Rugendyke

PAY TV

The Writers' Room, Bio, 8.30pm

Now here's a great idea – getting Oscar-winning screenwriter Jim Rash (The Descendants) to interview the writers behind some of TV's best dramas. Sadly, tonight's guest list needed ruthless editing. As well as Robert Kirkman (the comic-book writer who created The Walking Dead) we get Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville), Blair Butler (Attack of the Show!) and TV journo Michael Schneider – far too many people for just 22 minutes. Coming episodes will see Rash chatting with some of the writers behind Sons of Anarchy, House of Cards and The Good Wife.

Grand Designs Australia, LifeStyle, 8.30pm

This episode could have been called Grand Disasters Australia.In March 2010 Peter Maddison first headed to Mt Eliza to look at the big family home that Georgina and Philip were about to tear down and replace with a house of Georgina's design. The couple were planning to make use of a loophole under which the project would be deemed a renovation exempt from planning approval as long as they kept the original slab and one wall. But when that wall was pulled down for safety reasons they suddenly needed a permit and found themselves in a three-year nightmare of delays, compromises and cost blowouts. The end result? You'll have to tune in to find out.

Brad Newsome

MOVIES

The Great Escape (1963), Fox Classics (pay TV), 8.35pm

It may not be true of every 1950s and '60s schoolgirl, but it was certainly true of almost every schoolboy, that one of life's pleasures was reading World War II escape stories. Paul Brickhill'sThe Great Escape was perhaps the pinnacle, but any derring-do by British soldiers was riveting stuff, even if the end results were not always cheering.

Films were soon made of the best escape stories, and for many the best is John Sturges' The Great Escape. It tells of the plan, devised by Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough), to dig a long tunnel and escape from Stalag Luft III. At a surprisingly measured pace, it calmly goes through every key decision and brave action, step by step. It lulls one into a contented state from which we will be brutally interrupted, for The Great Escape has two of the greatest shock moments in cinema.

As with all films, war movies play with the facts. Characters are merged and others changed for dramatic effect.

The Great Escape is no exception, because no American was actually involved in the escape. But Hollywood has never let the facts get in the way of what they see as the best or most commercial story. A new form of propaganda started after the war and The Great Escape is part of it.

The Women on the 6th Floor (2010), SBS 2, 1.15am (Friday)

The forces that push us from dull and lifeless places towards a true engagement with life are not always pleasant or easy to deal with. Take Jean-Louis (Fabrice Luchini) and Suzanne Joubert (Sandrine Kiberlain), whose affluent and unchallenging lifestyle is turned upside down by the Spanish maids who move into the servant quarters on the sixth floor. There are few things French filmmakers like more than telling their bourgeois brothers and sisters how to better live their lives – via unsettling comedy.

Scott Murray