Sparks fly in ‘Fatal Desire’

Anne Heche appears to have found a home at Lifetime. She stars in “Fatal Desire” (9 p.m., Lifetime) with Eric Roberts. They play two lonely people who meet on the Internet and conduct a cyber-flirtation leading to a torrid, destructive fling that ends in murder.

Heche brings a palpable, believable desperation to her character, a Pittsburgh mother who has grown frightened of her mysterious and possibly mob-connected husband.

Roberts’ character exudes the confusion of a once-handsome man well past his prime. He seems to need only a gentle push to send his life spiraling into disarray.

Some say they don’t make movies for actresses of a certain age. “Fatal Desire” does a good job demonstrating how combustible sexual chemistry and dangerous, impulsive behavior are hardly the exclusive province of the young.

“Penn & Teller: Bull!” (10 p.m., Showtime) returns for a fourth season of iconoclastic argument. The comic illusionists take on sacred cows with profane passion, wit and all of the subtlety of a blowtorch. In the past, they’ve taken on PETA, bottled water, secondhand smoke and college-campus PC police.

In tonight’s season opener, Penn & Teller argue that the Boy Scouts have no right to exclude and demonize gays and atheists. As libertarians, they believe that a private organization can set its own rules, but since the Boy Scouts organization receives public funding and subsidies and often meets in school buildings and campsites funded by taxpayers, it has forfeited the right to such exclusivity.