This week saw the official business of the Crown being carried out at the State Opening of Parliament. Next week belongs to that other institution of the same name, one which generates headlines in its own right and looks set to cause a stir right to the end.

Pray be upstanding for the sixth and final series of The Crown (Netflix, Thursday).

Since it first aired in 2016, certain rituals have grown up around the release of any new series of The Crown. There is always a row over accuracy, with historians rushing to declare this or that is simply not true, followed by demands that the series be clearly labelled “fiction”.

We can expect all of this times ten when the final series airs, dealing as it does with the death of Diana (again played by the excellent Elizabeth Debicki). How much will be shown of the Paris crash? Should such a tragedy even be dramatised? Such was the secrecy surrounding the shoot viewers will have to wait and see if another storm is about to break over the head of creator Peter Morgan.

What we do know is the season will be in two parts. The first four episodes premiere on November 16, and the last six on December 14. And that, promises Morgan, will be that for one of the most garlanded and expensive (£211 million) television series ever made.

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Whatever the critics say you can be sure Morgan’s reaction will not be that of the unhappy chappy seen at the start of The Remarkable Journey of Bernard Levin (BBC4, Sunday, 10.30pm). Barging on to the set of a live programme (That Was the Week That Was), the complainer threw a punch at Levin and was escorted off the premises. Levin carried on, cool as you like.

“Not everyone agreed with Bernard,” says Trevor McDonald, narrator of the documentary and one of many lining up to praise Levin as the foremost journalist of his generation. As one contributor notes, Levin’s columns, three a week for 30 years for the Times, changed the profession. Out went deference and objectivity and in came irreverence and a determination to hold the powerful to account.

Among the talking heads are fellow columnists Matthew Parris and Bel Mooney. But it is Levin’s friend and partner for ten years, Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, who provides the sharpest insights into his character.

Born in 1928, Levin grew up in poverty in Camden Town, his father abandoning the family when Bernard was three. Ferociously clever, he won scholarships to a public school and the LSE and on graduating started work on a weekly magazine called Truth, leaving it for The Spectator. He was on his way.

The many clips from interviews and travelogues are terrific, showing Levin as feisty, witty, and always well-informed. Parkinson was an admirer, as was Wogan. On one chat show he appears with former Prime Minister Ted Heath no less to talk about classical music.

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Shakespeare - Rise of a Genius (BBC2, Wednesday, 9pm) is produced by the same award-winning team behind the recent Rise of the Nazis. The format has stayed the same: dramatic reconstructions plus talking heads, only in this case the contributors are more likely to be Hollywood A-listers as academics. From Brian Cox and Helen Mirren to Judi Dench and Gordon Brown (yes, that one), all come to heap praise on England’s, the world’s, bard.

The first episode aired last week and dealt with Shakespeare’s move from Stratford-upon-Avon to London and his efforts to break into the new business of writing for the theatre.

Life in sixteenth-century London looks convincingly grubby and dangerous; if the rats and plague did not get you the murderers did. How did the son of a glove maker rise to global prominence, and why is so little known of his life?

Brian Cox claims to have cracked that one. A lot of material in the plays is really about Shakespeare, says the Succession star. To know the plays is to understand the man. So begins a clip fest drawn from stage and screen.

One of several programmes made to mark 400 years since the publication of the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s plays, this is arts programming at its most accessible, packed with enthusiasm and fascinating asides. Did you know, for instance, where “box office” comes from? Or who called Shakespeare an “upstart crow” and why? Sure to have viewers falling in love with Shakespeare once more.

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This week’s classic comedy heading for a new home on the BBC iPlayer is dinnerladies. Victoria Wood only made two series, though there have been so many repeats it seems like more. Never mind, the comedy is fresh as a batch of morning rolls and twice as satisfying as the factory canteen workers put the world to rights and still get the shutters up in time. Wood is perfect as put upon Bren but it is Julie Walters as Petula, Bren’s, er, characterful mother, who steals the show, shoves it down her bra, and walks off in triumph.