This weekend on:

* “Torchwood:” The gang investigates a series of murders in which the victims have had their blood systems “erased.” This leads them to Pharm, a cutting-edge biotechnology firm dabbling in curing incurable diseases with lethal alien parasites who enter their patients’ blood streams. “Doctor Who’s” Miss Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) helps the team out on this one. As usual, a single episode of “Torchwood” boasts enough crazy inventiveness to fuel a season of most shows.

* “Dirt:” Season Two begins after a kind of rocky season one got bogged down in an overly serious, apocalyptic tone that didn’t really hew to what the show’s about. (Courteney Cox’s Lucy Spiller, the editor of the gossip rag Dirt Now, was the FX anti-hero who had the least fun even though her life was by far the easiest.)

They’ve changed the show quite a bit, lightening the tone (though it could still stand to have a few more really funny lines) and reimagining it as “Law & Order” meets TMZ.com, with storylines ripped from the tabs. If this had been what the show was all along, it probably would’ve fared better last year.

Sunday’s premiere offers a mashup between Anna Nicole Smith and Alexander Litvenenko (the Russian spy killed with Polonium-210), a cocktail so curious as to be inspired, and a rather inevitable character who’s equal parts Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. The March 9 episode, demurely entitled “Dirty Slutty Whores,” riffs endlessly on Paris Hilton (here dubbed “Milan Carlton” and played by an actress who fairly resembles the star of the box-office megabomb “The Hottie and the Nottie”), giving her a comeuppance we can only dream about.

Yet it also tries to couch her in a sociological context: “She’s all of us,” says Lucy’s favorite photographer Don (Ian Hart). “We’re a nation of spoiled rich people. Milan is so extreme that it makes us feel better by comparison. But really she’s just the part of ourselves that we loathe. That’s why we need her, to make ourselves feel better.”

The subplot involves Alec Baldwin and David Hasselhoff’s love child. Even moreso than “Law & Order,” “Dirt” makes absolutely certain you get the references, faithfully aping the original viral videos that rained such mortification down upon the celebrities referenced. They probably don’t have to be so on-point.

And good news for Don: His meds have finally been worked out so he’s no longer talking to his cat or hallucinating dead starlets in love with him. He speaks for us all in this exchange:

Lucy: Are you feeling good?

Don: No, but I’m feeling normal.

* “Breaking Bad:” Walt (Bryan Cranston) goes all bad-ass on us, even with his incapacitating cancer. Though he instructs his meth-slinging colleage Jesse (Aaron Paul), “No violence” in his business dealings, he pretty spectacularly breaks his own rule by episode’s end. Fulminate of mercury gets some pretty righteous product placement: By episode’s end, everyone with a score to settle is going to want some.

Chemo’s taking its toll, and Walt’s DEA-agent brother-in-law finds a clue linking a crime scene to chemistry equipment at Walt’s school, resulting in blowback that leaves Walt rueful for a few minutes.

Walt and Jesse take a rather perilous journey toward locating a new distributor for their wares. Snorting a little of Walt’s meth, the unhinged operator sputters, “This kicks like a mule with its balls wrapped in duct tape!” Which means, in case you’re wondering, that it’s really good.

That would also be a really good pull-quote for this show. So, here you go, AMC: “This kicks like a mule with its balls wrapped in duct tape!” – David Kronke, Mayor of Television.

* “Aliens in America:” We’ve previously discussed the likely fate of The CW, and this modest sitcom’s likely going to be residual damage. The show, about a Muslim foreign exchange student in a small Wisconsin town, returns with new episodes on Sunday. Oddly enough, the main characters cede center stage to Dylan Taylor, whose recurring character, Trey, gets the episode’s best laughs. Taylor transforms him in this installment into the most polite and empathetic bully ever.

On the downside: The other storylines aren’t particularly inspired, Scott Patterson’s role has essentially been reduced to that of a bystander, Amy Pietz’s character has gotten a little one-note and the following week’s “Rent”-inspired episode should trigger a moratorium on “Rent” jokes. In a nicer world, “Aliens in America” might’ve won itself a bigger audience. But there is no nicer world.

- “Torchwood:” 9 p.m. Saturday, BBC America.

- “Dirt:” 10 p.m. Sunday, FX.

- “Breaking Bad:” 10 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

- “Aliens in America:” 8:30 p.m., The CW Channel 5.

(A review of “Oprah’s Big Give” will appear in Sunday’s paper.)