Now that’s a pity. There is a lot to admire about The Newsreader (BBC2, Thursday-Friday), not least its commitment to accuracy. Be it shoulder pads or sexism, the television newsroom drama set in 1980s Australia nails it.

Imagine the disappointment, then, when a scene involving a producer and the editor’s secretary suggested that journalists are creative with their expenses. How dare they smear a noble profession in this way.

The expenses gag fixes The Newsreader firmly in journalism’s past, as does the newsroom heaving with bodies. But this is no nostalgia for old time’s sake. At the same time as he is having fun with the past, writer-creator Michael Lucas is looking ahead to the industry’s future. In short, if you want the gory details of how TV news went from John Humphrys to Neil Oliver, or their international equivalents, it’s all here.

When we rejoin Helen and Dale (Anna Torv, Sam Reid) for a second series it is 1987 and the “golden couple of news” - in public, anyway - are about to anchor an election night special. The station has been taken over by a new CEO who wants the news to be lighter and brighter, more audience-friendly.

“Little Charlie”, small of stature, huge of ego, is not keen on “shrill” Helen and her “aggressive” style. Whereas Dale, the human golden retriever, now he’s the future of TV news.

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Barely five minutes in the tension goes from nought to fraught and stays there. Not since Broadcast News has a drama caught so well the sheer nerve-shredding, adrenaline-pumping rush of live television. “It’s like juggling eggs on a rollercoaster,” says news director Lindsay Cunningham (William McInnes), a big galah who makes Barry Humphries’ Sir Les Patterson seem hopelessly woke. It will all end in tears and Fox News, but for now, enjoy.

Stacey Dooley - Inside the Undertakers (BBC1, Thursday) opened with the documentary maker and Strictly champ talking about her fear of death, and how she had decided to face that terror with work experience at a Nottingham undertakers.

As pitches go it sounds about as shallow as a bird bath. If it had been anyone else I would have turned tail. But it was Dooley, so I didn’t. She began by coffin shopping with 80-year-old Pat, who had come in to arrange and pay for her own funeral.

“How much do you think this is?” Dooley asked Pat while pointing at a gold-plated coffin. Three grand, 21 grand, guessed Pat as Dooley made “higher” and “lower” signals. Didn’t this used to be a game show, Play Your Tarot Cards Right with Bruce Forsyth? Anyway, it was £42,499.

Reality kicked in hard when Dooley accompanied driver Paul on a trip to the hospital mortuary for the daily collection. On today’s list, said Paul, were “five bodies and a baby”.

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Dooley worked her way through the various departments, including the florists. You name it and they could make a floral tribute out of it. Someone wanted a jet-washer, another a giant cup of tea.

She met Jenny, 57, who was dying. Jenny wanted mourners to wear fancy dress to the funeral. “We compromised with a bright top,” said her twin sister. “It’s just rubbish,” sis went on, neatly summing up what the family was going through. “The whole thing is rubbish and I can’t do anything about it.”

First it was Meghan and Harry, then the Beckhams, and Sly Stallone. Now Robbie Williams (Netflix) has come to tell us how awful it is to be rich and famous.

Like the man said, he’s nearly 50, has a wife, four kids, and things are going okay. Yet he feels the past, filled as it was with drink, drugs, and anxiety, weighing down on him. Now, you and I might think the last thing he needs is to hike through a mountain of archive footage, much of it showing him at his lowest points, with Robbie now commenting on Robbie then, but what do we know?

Made by Ridley Scott Associates, produced by Asif Kapadia, the Oscar-winning director of Amy, and directed by Joe Pearlman (Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now), you can almost smell the money that has been spent. Everything looks gorgeous, from the Williams family home to shots of the desert where he went through one of his stints in rehab.

Williams gets to the root of his problems early on. Too much too soon, he says of teenage Robbie in the Take That years. He could have left it at that, but oh no, we’re in this for the long haul, four hours in total.

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If it had simply been Williams finding different ways to moan about what looked like a very nice life it would have been a slog. But between his personality (still engaging after all these years), the general slickness, and the clips of the old days, the time flies. That said, it could easily have been half the length.

Now that we’ve covered the A-listers I cannot wait for the next lot of celebrity tell-alls to drop. Anyone else for Sooty and Sweep: the Rock and Roll Years?