Ilove a back-handed compliment: I think good ones are almost an art form. You know the kinda thing: “you don’t sweat much for a fat lass”.

A favourite from my mother during one of many teenage self-absorbed angsts was: “you’ve got nice skin… in between your spots”. Ouch.

You never forget them: that’s the point – the barb of insult sticks right in its target after your ego’s been fluffed by a hint of flattery. It’s genius – not always deliberate, but always memorable. And if you take it on the chin, you can laugh about it (even if you take that grudge to your very grave).

And you’ll find plenty of this in the minefield of telly dating. Channel Four’s First Dates returns for its second series (Wednesdays, 10pm). It is such naked, raw, compelling telly as the singletons trot in to meet their suitors and survive the resulting car crash.

In the first chunk, Chris Moyles lookalike Ross sized up his fierce Mancunian warrior woman Regan with a huge gulp before delivering compliments in the style of ammo. “You’re attractive,” he told her, as if trying to take her ego down a peg or two, after she had dodged a suggestion she was “beautiful” . “Well, you’re ok… I would, anyway.” It doesn’t seem that harsh, except we – the viewer – see Regan in her off-date piece to camera, telling us how she grew up in care and never had enough love. It makes him look like an utter utter bastard.

And to Monday’s The Culture Show (BBC2, Monday, now on iPlayer) on Damon Albarn going solo. Now, seeing your heroes up close can be a dangerous thing and – cue backhanded compliment – the majority of this half-hour close-up on a genius threatened to amount to nothing more than moronic piffle.

I love Damon Albarn, not for his Blur stage so much as his prolific output since then, namely virtual band Gorillaz, album The Good, the Bad & The Queen and his opera Monkey: Journey to the West. But as the Beeb follows him tracing his roots (the fairly pedestrian Leytonstone and Colchester: not his fault, to be fair), he bumbles, semi-literate, seemingly having had a parody failure and sense of humour bypass, talking to swans, and betraying nothing of his talent.

It’s frustrating – like playing striptease with someone you especially fancy… only to find they’ve got a rubber onesie on underneath their clothes. Until... you hear the tinkling of the plaintive Thom Yorkesque strings and melodies of his new album Hollow Ponds and you’re aurally floored.

In the final transformative minute of the show Damon says: “For those who give a s*** – and I’m not assuming anyone does – then hopefully there’s a bit of an insight into who I am. Otherwise it’s just the neurotic, left-handed, middle-aged man talking nonsense out there into the void.”

Then he plunges everyone into the sort of universal, inexplicable harmonic joy that makes up for everything… and makes you feel incredibly stupid and small for even doubting him.

Another mesmerising, beautiful and somewhat harrowing must-see is BBC4’s latest Storyville: Cutie and the Boxer (BBC4, Monday and iPlayer). This Oscar-nominated documentary depicts painters Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, who arrived in New York from their native Japan in 1969 and their sheer struggle to survive art, life, alcoholism, parenthood and everything else, while remaining in a strained orbit of marriage to each other. Never has the pain of a somewhat toxic relationship seemed so brave.

There are no happy endings, but this is an hour and a half’s viewing that will change your world view about pain and love... if you had one!