The Simpsons, Eleven, 7.30pm

Where so many other cartoons end up relying on sexualised humour, The Simpsons should be applauded for pumping out episode after episode of smart and original humour. Tonight the family heads to Dizzneeland (leaving the car parked in the ‘‘ethnic princess section’’) and end up being kidnapped by Springfield’s resident drooling aliens, Kang and Kodos. Cue references to everything from The Hunger Games to Sophie’s Choice.

Tony Robinson’s WWI, SBS One, 7.30pm

Why can’t more Australian history series be like this? An engaging host, enthusiastic and plain-speaking historians, photographs, museum visits and the story of World War I told simply and effectively without gimmicky re-enactments or celebrity talking heads. (I’m looking at you Channel Seven and your awful Australia: The Story of Us.) Tony Robinson has cornered the history host market in Britain and with good reason. He’s personable and interested in what’s he is talking about. Episode three of this series gets to the muddy middle of World War I – the Battle of the Somme is in full swing, the Western Front is locked in a stalemate and millions of lives  lost. Robinson  covers a lot of ground in an hour – Zeppelins, tanks, U-boats, dogs (family pets conscripted!), medicine and the whitewashing of war history – and none of it feels like the same old information trotted out in the billion or so documentaries made since war’s end.

The Agony of the Body, ABC, 9pm

Adam Zwar kicks off his new Agony series with a more serious topic tonight – the body – and a discussion of the burqa. Although it’s an interesting discussion and, as usual, Waleed Aly makes the most sense, it’s slightly off-kilter with the light-hearted humour the show has become known for. Contributing to the more serious feel are a bunch of new faces – the Gruen panel’s Jane Caro and Dee Madigan, journalists Tracey Spicer and Joe Hildebrand, mother and daughter combo Dr Gael Jennings and Grace Jennings-Edquist and former federal MP Amanda Vanstone. Thankfully, John Elliott is still ensconced on the sofa with his son Tom, whose efforts to keep a straight face while Elliott senior comments on ‘‘good sorts’’ in bikinis provide some welcome relief.
Louise Rugendyke

PAY TV

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Boomerang, 3.40pm

Bronies – those adult fans of this little kids’ cartoon – tend to get a lot of stick online, especially when they claim that the show taught them everything they know about friendship. It’s a fashionable claim, to be sure, but might there be something to it? It certainly doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility for the show’s easily digestible lessons in friendship to be helpful for people who, for one reason or another, find it difficult to socialise or empathise with others. Today, for instance, the energetic Rainbow Dash is leading a team of flying ponies in a prestigious air race. Rainbow Dash is a superb aerial athlete but her teammates are no-hopers. When the best team in the comp tries to poach her she has to decide whether to abandon her friends in pursuit of personal glory. The issues involved get a thorough thrashing out. 
Brad Newsome 

MOVIES

Die Hard 2 (1990), Action Movies (pay TV), 6.20pm

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is at Dallas International Airport, awaiting the arrival of his airborne wife (Bonnie Bedelia). Ever alert, McClane notices suspicious packages being passed across the floor of a crowded cafe. In the blink of an eye, McClane is on the trail of what turns out to be a renegade military unit intent on freeing from custody the evil General Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero). Pitting one individual against a group of bad guys within the confines of a snowbound airport is a fine idea and makes for tense action. And when the film moves into the snowy outdoors, director Renny Harlin effortlessly generates an more-epic sense of adventure. You might even exclaim ‘‘Yippee ki yay’’ when McClane flicks on that cigarette lighter.

Fermat’s Room (2007), SBS 2, 2.10am (Thursday)

People have long been fascinated with brainteasers (‘‘If seven tourists need to cross a Peruvian river and the only canoe ...’’). Solving them is usually just a matter of having fun. In Fermat’s Room, it is a matter of life and death. Five people have been invited to a secret meeting in a locked room, where enigmas are sent to them via a PDA. If they don’t get the answer correct within a minute, the walls start closing in. Each participant has a special gift (brilliant at mathematics) or a criminal liability (a hit-and-run driver), but nothing is as it first seems. This shrinking-room mystery offers the pleasure of not only deducing who is the villain, but also solving all the puzzles along the way (‘‘If one village is made up of people who only tell the truth ...’’). While Luis Piedrahita and Rodrigo Sopena’s film is best viewed in the claustrophobic space of a cinema, where one can easily imagine not being allowed to leave without solving the central conundrum, it is still great fun watched in an exit-able lounge room. Spanish cinema has long been good at these kinds of intellectual games: Intacto springs quickly to mind, along with the brilliant films of Alejandro Amenabar, Open Your Eyes especially. While Fermat’s Room isn’t in that league (the set-up is too slow, the subtexts not so rich), it does raise a profound issue in the final scene. As our world frogmarches forward with unquestioned certainties about solving human issues and climate change, one should perhaps remember that Australians introduced cane toads to get rid of insects and Europeans killed cats to stop the spread of plague. Fermat’s Room rightly argues that a little humbleness about our small role in the universe might be in order.
Scott Murray