You’re not supposed to giggle at a story about date rape, adultery and death, but sometimes you can’t help yourself. Dreary from beginning to end, the made-for-cable melodrama “The Tenth Circle” (8 p.m., today, Lifetime) is so earnest and desperate to seem smart that it dares us to find it ridiculous.

Laura Stone (Kelly Preston) is a professor and Dante scholar. She provides the movie’s heavy-handed narration and its “Inferno”-inspired title. Ron Eldard plays her husband, Daniel, a comic-book artist with an “edgy” past. Unfortunately for their marriage, he’s transformed himself into the perfect househusband and full-time father to Trixie (Britt Robertson), their daughter, who is 14 going on 30.

“He makes a better wife than I do,” Laura confesses to her lover, a younger man who resembles the generic punk type.

Laura compensates for her miserable marriage with a miserable affair. Like Dante, she’s in hell.

If this weren’t maudlin enough, Trixie is a teen in turmoil. Looking for true love in a friends-with-benefits world (now that’s a book title!), she’s dumped by her boyfriend, Jason (Jamie Johnston). When she tries to win him back, he rapes her. Or so she says, and her accusations set up drastic consequences for a tight-knit New England town.

“Circle” reaches an absurd apotheosis when the tightly wrapped Daniel proceeds to recite – for reasons unknown – all of the Eskimo words for snow.

¢ “Saturday Night Live” (10:30 p.m., today, NBC) honors the late comedian George Carlin with a broadcast of the very first episode of “SNL” from Oct. 11, 1975, hosted by Carlin.

¢ Nobody works on television. This didn’t start with “The Hills.” Who wanted to see Ralph Kramden drive his bus? Maynard G. Krebs, the Beatnik sidekick played by Bob Denver on “Dobie Gillis,” went into a cold sweat at the mention of the “W” word. “The Simpsons” remains pretty revolutionary in depicting three things that everybody does but rarely happen on television: going to church, watching television and going to work.

“The Singing Office” (8 p.m., Sunday, TLC) has “Dancing with the Stars” vets Joey Fatone and Mel “Scary Spice” B. invade various workplaces to find the best singers and send them off to musical boot camp and a chance to win $50,000.

Each show lasts an hour, and that’s about 30 minutes too long.

Joey and Mel audition “talent” at places ranging from hair salons to animal shelters to discover who has been hiding their talent behind a photocopy machine.

The talent hunts give way to practice, practice, practice, followed by workplace bonding.

In the end, it’s a bunch of amateurs singing Motown and then going back to work. It might be fun if it involved people we all knew, but it doesn’t.

Today’s highlights

¢ Olympic trials in track and field (7 p.m., NBC).

¢ Robin receives news from King Richard on “Robin Hood” (8 p.m., BBC America).

¢ A lawyer has visions in the pilot episode of “Eli Stone” (9 p.m., ABC).

Sunday’s highlights

¢ Swimming competition on U.S. Olympic trials (7 p.m., NBC).

¢ A tall order on “Ice Road Truckers” (8 p.m., History).