Talking Pictures TV TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On Talking Pictures TV Tonight

Talking Pictures TV (TPTV) is the independent, family-run channel built almost entirely on one man’s private film collection. Noel Cronin spent decades buying up the rights to older British and Hollywood titles through his company Renown Pictures, and in May 2015 he and his daughter, Sarah Cronin-Stanley, turned that archive into a television channel. Eleven years on, nobody else on British free-to-air is attempting anything like it. Thursday 15 October 2026 keeps to the channel’s familiar shape: old British films and archive series fill the day, with The Spider and the Fly at 11:30am and Squibs at 4:45pm. The evening is archive television until late, running from The Brothers at 6:55pm through Mark Saber and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club to the one film of the night, The Killing of Sister George, a 1968 drama that starts at 9:20pm. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Thursday 15 October 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Thursday 15 October 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Also on TV tonight at 9pm

• BBC One: The Celebrity Traitors (from 8pm)
• ITV1: Long Lost Family
• BBC Two: Surgeons: At the Edge of Life
• Channel 4: Our Tiny Islands (from 8pm)
• Channel 5: Love Nature
• Film4: Wrath of Man
• E4: Gogglebox
• ITV2: Big Brother
• ITV3: Vera (from 8pm)
• ITV4: Benidorm

Every channel tonight, side by side · Films on TV tonight · Tomorrow’s TV

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

The small hours begin with Dick Tracy Returns at 1:15am, then Scotland Yard at 3:20am and Stagecoach West at 4am. Two Batman episodes follow at 5am and 5:30am, and the day proper opens at 6am with Sherlock Holmes.

Mid-morning is The Voice of Merrill at 6:35am, a short What’s On TPTV With Noel at 8:15am and No Trace at 8:25am, then The Crooked Sky at 10am and The Spider and the Fly at 11:30am. The afternoon runs The Duchess of Duke Street at 1:30pm, High Tide at 2:35pm and a Look at Life short, Julius Hagen season item and Squibs from 4:25pm, leading into the evening block below.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Thursday 15 October 2026.

Julius Hagen Season — Talking Pictures TV, 6:15pm

A five-minute item from the channel’s Julius Hagen season, the producer behind a run of 1930s British films. It is a brief link into the evening rather than a programme to plan around.

Strange But True? — Talking Pictures TV, 6:20pm

A 35-minute slot for this archive series, listed as series 1 episode 36.

The Brothers — Talking Pictures TV, 6:55pm

The 1970s BBC family-firm drama about a haulage business, here at series 4 episode 6. It runs an hour and five minutes, the longest piece of early-evening drama on the channel tonight.

Mark Saber — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

A half-hour of the 1950s detective series. The listing carries no episode details.

The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club — Talking Pictures TV, 8:30pm

Series 2, episode 20 of the northern working men’s club variety show. It fills 50 minutes before the film.

The Killing of Sister George — Talking Pictures TV, 9:20pm

The night’s only film is Robert Aldrich’s 1968 drama, with Beryl Reid and Susannah York. It is long, listed at nearly three hours with breaks, so expect it to run beyond midnight.

What kind of films and shows are on Talking Pictures TV

Vintage British and Hollywood films

The backbone of the schedule is the Renown Pictures library: British films from the 1930s to the 1970s, plus war pictures, adventure films and the odd Hollywood title bought in to fill a gap. Quality swings wildly from one afternoon to the next, which is part of the deal.

Archive TV drama and detective series

Early evenings lean on serialised drama from the 1950s through the 1980s: Z Cars, Public Eye, Hannay and others of that stripe. Much of it isn’t shown anywhere else on British television, and some of it hadn’t been shown anywhere at all for thirty-odd years before this channel dug it out. If you want to know why people are fond of Talking Pictures TV rather than merely tolerant of it, this is the part of the schedule to point at.

Cult strands, B-movies and magazine shows

Late nights get stranger: horror and cult titles through Caroline Munro’s Cellar Club, oddities like Supernatural, imported curios.

For an archive channel, the range is remarkable: across 48 days Talking Pictures TV drew 1,088 slots from 577 different titles, making it the second least repetitive channel on Freeview after Film4. our study of repeats on UK television has the full table.

How to watch Talking Pictures TV

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find Talking Pictures TV across the main UK television platforms:

Talking Pictures TV is free on all of the above platforms, with no subscription required. It doesn’t run a +1 timeshift channel, so these are the only live feeds available.

TPTV Encore catch-up

TPTV Encore is the channel’s own free streaming service, launched in December 2021 and run through a browser at tptvencore.co.uk, with an app on Android. Register an email address and recent broadcasts are usually there for about a week.

The better reason to bother with it is what sits behind the catch-up: a deep archive that includes Southern Television material never given a regular slot on the main channel. Those older titles stay free after the catch-up window shuts, but they carry adverts.

Frequently asked questions

What’s on Talking Pictures TV tonight?

The evening opens with Strange But True? at 6:20pm and The Brothers at 6:55pm, then Mark Saber at 8pm and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club at 8:30pm. The film The Killing of Sister George, from 1968, starts at 9:20pm. The schedule table above has the full day.

What channel is Talking Pictures TV on?

Freeview 82, Sky 324, Virgin Media 445 and Freesat 306. It’s also on Freely at channel 36. All are free to watch.

Does Talking Pictures TV have a +1 channel?

No. TPTV Encore stands in for a +1 service, with recent broadcasts available to catch up on demand instead.

Is Talking Pictures TV free to watch?

Yes, entirely. It’s advertising-funded rather than subscription-funded, on the live channel and on TPTV Encore alike.

Verdict

I rate Talking Pictures TV highly for exactly what it is: a small independent operation that still does something none of the bigger channels bother with. Old films and archive television get a proper home here instead of the odd graveyard slot. It won’t be for everyone, and some evenings the schedule reads like a lucky dip. That’s also the appeal.

Tonight’s single film is The Killing of Sister George at 9:20pm. Before it the evening is archive television: an archive curiosities slot, a 1970s family-firm drama, a 1950s detective show and a northern club variety programme. Nothing here is reaching for a big premiere, which is more or less how most evenings go.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Freeview Films Tonight