The long-awaited return of TV’s smartest, most stylish and best-written series is over. “Mad Men” (9 p.m. Sunday, AMC) returns for a third season of drinking, lying, philandering, office-scheming and the kinds of weird surprises and misunderstandings that erupt when characters live behind layers of masks and illusion they only dimly understand.

As the season begins, the staff of Sterling Cooper is just getting used to their new British partners and not quite sure if the transatlantic arrangement will work. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) awaits the birth of his third child and muses on his own arrival in the world, offering us a chance to discover more about the many secrets and lies behind his original identity and complete reinvention. A casual tryst may prove fateful for one key staff member and more than one employee takes a takes a change in status and position very badly.

Tonight’s season opener is not as shocking and revelatory as the series premiere, nor is it as slow and murky as last season’s first episode. And that’s a good thing. “Mad Men” has returned, assured of its tone and confident that its small but wildly faithful audience will hang on through the turbulence to come.

• “Singing Bee” (7 p.m. today, CMT) wraps up its first season with back-to-back installments. The karaoke-style singing competition has blended country and other pop genres to reach a wider audience for the Nashville-based network. Actress Melissa Peterman (“Reba”) hosts.

• Cheaply produced reality television has made life difficult for struggling actors and writers, so it’s nice to see them return the favor on “Reality Hell” (9:45 p.m. Sunday, E!. In this spoof series, a recurring cast of actors poses as contestants on a different brand of reality show every week. In each episode, one poor dupe will participate without any knowledge that he or she is the object of ridicule.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it is. Spike TV’s “The Joe Schmo Show” worked in a similar manner way back in 2003, but in that series, one duped “Joe” lasted the entire season of a single show. “Hell” lambastes a new genre and a fresh victim every week.

In the amusingly over-the-top premiere, an aspiring model enters to win a show named “The Complete Package,” hosted by a brittle, aging model, an Australian “expert” with “a Ph.D. in modeling” and an arrogant, bombastic photographer who claims that modeling is more frightening than war.

Our victim is surrounded by stereotypical players, including the insecure bulimic who blurts out her innermost secrets; an over-friendly rival who hugs just a little too tight and a little too often and a “Ghetto Fabulous” model who is a master of mental and physical intimidation.

Don’t look for great acting on “Reality Hell.” The performers have a hard enough time trying not to laugh while delivering ridiculous lines. (“We’ve come to our decision after three agonizing minutes of deliberation …”)

Look for ludicrous ad campaign for a product named Champeezy, an “elite urban sparkling drink.” When the “expert” declares that modeling is more about brains than beauty, our unsuspecting contestant turns to the camera and brags, “I’m very well-read. I’ve finished all seven of the Harry Potter books.”

Therein lies the dilemma for writers and actors on non-reality fare. It’s difficult to script a line that absurd and delivered with so much vacant conviction.