Interviewed live just before his Proms performance of Britten’s Serenade, Ben Johnson was asked the usual question as to whether the composer wrote especially well for the tenor voice. “He writes amazingly for every instrument,” came the reply. If we needed a single-programme testament to that special genius, this all-Britten celebration from Vladimir Jurowski and his London Philharmonic Orchestra was it. In addition to the two billed soloists, there were at least a dozen from within the orchestra who proved the point.

For Londoners unable to travel up to Aldeburgh – or, now, to Leeds for the revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s Opera North production – this was the only chance in Britten centenary year to be blitzed by his seminal masterpiece. After the phenomenal success of the Proms’ Wagner semi-stagings, even the craft and sure-footedness of Daniel Slater’s direction here was never going to be a substitute for Grimes in the opera house (or on the beach), serving only to show that this is a supreme music drama least happily separated from the theatre.

You could call it the iceberg syndrome. It’s a work of art that is a flash, a sliver or an imprint: think of a passport photograph, a cheap trinket or a half-finished graffiti. Yet beneath the simple image there is a world of pain. Rachel De-lahay’s new play, a follow up to her award-winning The Westbridge, offers snapshots of the great migrations of recent years, and slowly reveals the raw emotion of these simple tales.

"The price of great love is great misery when one of you dies," intoned the Earl of Grantham lugubriously in this fourth-season opener [****], and the death of Matthew Crawley hovered heavily over the household. His widow Lady Mary haunted the corridors like the Woman in Black, speaking in an even more dolorous monotone than usual. The great Penelope Wilton imbued Matthew's mother Isobel with a piercingly real sense of grief.

We know, not least through her own account, of Marianne Faithfull's colourful progress as winsome Sixties pop star, lover of Mick Jagger, junkie on the streets of Soho and her artistic rebirth as gravel-throated chanteuse. Here, her frequently gruelling trawl through archives from the 1930s and '40s helped to explain how she became the artist she is, while throwing up some morbidly fascinating details about the inner workings of the Third Reich.

A film once touted as surefire Oscar bait instead looks set to clean up at the Golden Raspberry awards (or Razzies) if this preposterously inept biopic of the world's best-known woman finds the fate it deserves. Cloth-eared, cynical, and not even blessed with a persuasive star turn to show itself off, Diana seems destined to become the stuff of camp: the sort of thing the Prince Charles Cinema might be screening before too long to gleeful hordes chiming in on cue with the script's multiple howlers.

It is a shock, in this succinct exhibition of two British colossi of the past century, Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Francis Bacon (1909-1992), to be reminded of just how colossal and original are their achievements. We are shown their curiously affecting affinities, in their adherence to the human figure at the core of their work, and reminded through the display of documents and catalogues of their truly international success, both critical and financial. 

It's a testament to how good an idea Who Do You Think You Are? is that well into its tenth series (and several others worldwide) it still provides great entertainment – and not a little emotion. Its secret, I suspect, lies in the fact that every family has its stories and dramas and last night's subject, comic Sarah Millican, uncovered some interesting tales buried several generations back, long lost from current family folklore.

There’s something about the Arctic Monkeys that calls to mind the Rolling Stones. Not now, obviously - it might feel like it’s been forever since four messy hairdos and northern accents burst out of Sheffield, though in truth it’s only been about a decade - but the Stones that scandalised an America expecting another Beatles with their sleazy, bluesy rock. Recorded in California, if there’s one thing AM does not sound like it’s an album by a band whose name still sounds like a practical joke dreamed up in some spotty kid’s bedroom.

Boldly not going anywhere near things like Grange Hill or Teachers, Big School is more like a throwback to the St Trinian's of the 1950s. Co-writer and star David Walliams plays a man known only as Mr Church, Deputy Head of Chemistry at Greybridge School (the nod to Billy Bunter's Greyfriars presumably being the whole point). He's repressed, uptight and sexually inept, and more than a tiny bit reminiscent of Rowan Atkinson playing the title role in Simon Gray's Quartermaine's Terms.