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

Talking Pictures TV 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. Tuesday 4 August 2026 opens with a run of 1950s and 60s crime and war pictures overnight, gives the afternoon to a batch of thrillers and westerns, then moves the evening into archive adventure series before Joseph Losey’s 1967 drama Accident takes the 9pm slot. Channel numbers are in the table further down.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Tuesday 4 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Tuesday 4 August 2026, on Freeview 82.

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Tuesday’s small hours open with Poldark at 1:55am, a 1996 adaptation of the family saga with John Bowe, Mel Martin and Michael Attwell rather than the more famous BBC version. The short Men Against the Sea follows at 4:05am, a 1936 documentary following a trawler crew battling the winter seas, then The Veil at 4:25am (series 1, episode 1), a 1958 anthology instalment with Boris Karloff as a man who foresees his own brother’s murder on a Channel crossing.

Railway Murders takes the 5am slot (series 1, episode 1), a 2021 documentary reconstruction of the 1864 killing of Thomas Briggs, the first murder committed on a British train, with Franz Muller convicted of the crime. Murder At 3am runs from 6am, a 1953 Francis Searle-directed thriller starring Dennis Price as a detective hunting a serial killer who strikes at the same hour each time. The Proud Rebel fills the 7:10am slot, Michael Curtiz’s 1958 western with Alan Ladd and his real-life son David Ladd as a Confederate veteran rebuilding his life after the war.

Oliver Twist (1982) arrives at 9:15am, Clive Donner’s television film with George C. Scott as Fagin and Tim Curry as Bill Sikes, and Biggles: Adventures in Time takes the late morning at 11:15am, the 1986 time-travel adventure with Peter Cushing among the cast. William Tell runs at 1pm (series 1, episode 21), the 1950s adventure series starring Conrad Phillips, and Appointment with Venus follows at 1:35pm, a 1951 wartime comedy-drama with David Niven sent to rescue a prize cow from a German-occupied Channel Island.

The afternoon closes with Anthony Perkins… The Actor Behind the Door at 3:20pm, a 2020 documentary on the actor and his uneasy relationship with Norman Bates, and Chase a Crooked Shadow at 4:25pm, Michael Anderson’s 1958 thriller with Anne Baxter as an heiress confronted by a stranger claiming to be her dead brother.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Tuesday 4 August 2026.

What’s On TPTV With Noel — Talking Pictures TV, 6:10pm

Noel Cronin opens the evening with his own picks for the month (series 1, episode 71), a short segment that doubles as a preview of what else is worth catching on the channel over the coming weeks.

Whiplash — Talking Pictures TV, 6:25pm

Whiplash reaches series 1, episode 29 at 6:25pm. The 1960s stagecoach adventure series, built around Peter Graves as an American driving mail routes through the Australian outback, puts its hero and his passenger up against a flood in this instalment.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E — Talking Pictures TV, 6:55pm

Robert Vaughn and David McCallum are back as Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin at 6:55pm (series 2, episode 3), investigating a criminal organisation’s plans for an all-powerful computer. Cold War spy plots rarely age gracefully, but this one still has some fun in it.

Buccaneer — Talking Pictures TV, 7:55pm

Buccaneer continues at 7:55pm (series 1, episode 3), the 1980 aviation drama following Bryan Marshall’s charter pilots as one deal starts to look shadier than the last.

Accident — Talking Pictures TV, 9pm

Joseph Losey’s Accident takes the 9pm slot, a 1967 drama with Dirk Bogarde as an Oxford don whose fixation on a student, played by Jacqueline Sassard, unsettles his marriage and his friendship with a fellow academic, Stanley Baker. It is a slow, deliberately uncomfortable film, closer to a character study than a thriller, and one of the more serious pieces of British cinema this channel has scheduled all week.

Fortean TV — Talking Pictures TV, 11:05pm

Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe hosts another round-up of the unexplained at 11:05pm (series 1, episode 10), taking in sea serpents, healing fish and rather more besides. It’s 1990s cult television at its most unbothered by scepticism.

Body Double — Talking Pictures TV, 11:40pm

Brian De Palma’s Body Double closes the night at 11:40pm, a 1984 thriller with Craig Wasson as a struggling actor whose voyeuristic habit drags him into someone else’s crime.

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.

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?

Tuesday evening runs through archive adventure series first: What’s On TPTV With Noel at 6:10pm, Whiplash at 6:25pm, The Man from U.N.C.L.E at 6:55pm and Buccaneer at 7:55pm. Joseph Losey’s Accident, with Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker, takes the 9pm slot, before Fortean TV at 11:05pm and Brian De Palma’s Body Double at 11:40pm close out the night. Times for the rest of the evening are in the schedule table above.

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 is the channel’s replacement for a +1 service, letting you catch up with recent broadcasts 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 doing something none of the bigger channels bother with anymore, giving old films and archive television a proper home instead of the odd graveyard slot. It won’t be for everyone. Some evenings the schedule reads like a lucky dip, but that’s also the appeal.

Accident at 9pm is the one worth staying in for tonight. Joseph Losey’s 1967 drama, with Dirk Bogarde as an Oxford academic unravelling over a student, is a slower watch than most of what surrounds it, and better for it. Tune in earlier for The Man from U.N.C.L.E at 6:55pm if you’d rather have a straightforward Cold War caper before the mood shifts.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide