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. Wednesday 5 August 2026 opens overnight with the Taviani brothers’ war drama Night of the Shooting Stars, spends the day on archive detective series, sitcoms and short documentaries, then closes the evening with Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity at 9:50pm. Channel numbers are in the table further down.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Wednesday 5 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Wednesday 5 August 2026, on Freeview 82.

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Wednesday’s small hours open with Night of the Shooting Stars at 1:55am, the Taviani brothers’ 1982 drama in which Cecilia recalls her Tuscan hometown defying its Nazi occupiers, with Margarita Lozano and Omero Antonutti. Target: The Corruptors follows at 4am (series 1, episode 30), a 1961 instalment called License to Steal, with Stephen McNally and Robert Harland as reporters investigating industrial fraud. Railway Murders takes the 5am slot (series 1, episode 2), a 2021 documentary reconstruction of the 1881 killing of coin dealer Frederick Gold, murdered on a train by 22-year-old Percy Lefroy Mapleton.

Sandokan: Pirate of Malaysia runs from 6am, Umberto Lenzi’s 1964 adventure with Steve Reeves as the pirate leader defying a British general’s attempt to force out the Sultan. Guilty? fills the 8:10am slot, a 1956 crime picture in which a solicitor, played by John Justin, becomes convinced a wartime heroine has been wrongly charged with murder, with Donald Wolfit and Sydney Tafler also starring. The First of the Few takes the late morning at 10am, Leslie Howard’s 1942 film about Spitfire designer R.J. Mitchell, which Howard both directed and starred in alongside David Niven and Rosamund John.

Scotland Yard airs at 12:20pm (series 1, episode 6), a 1954 case titled Late Night Final directed by Montgomery Tully, and The Buccaneers follows at 1pm (series 1, episode 21) with The Return of Calico Jack finding Brian Worth’s crew at odds while their captain is away on business. The short London’s Canal Ride in the 1950s runs at 1:35pm, then Up In The World at 1:45pm, John Paddy Carstairs’s 1956 comedy with Norman Wisdom as a window cleaner caught up in a country-house kidnap plot.

The afternoon closes with the short Look At Life Hyde Park Corner at 3:30pm, a 1959 look at the underpass being built at the London landmark, followed by Dial 999 at 3:45pm (series 1, episode 29), a 1958 case called Barge Burglars with Robert Beatty on the trail of a gang using a tourist barge to escape their raids on the Regent’s Canal. The Bells Go Down rounds off the daytime schedule at 4:20pm, Basil Dearden’s 1943 drama with Tommy Trinder and James Mason as volunteers in the wartime London Auxiliary Fire Service.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 5 August 2026.

So This Is London 1948 — Talking Pictures TV, 6:10pm

A short 1948 travelogue taking in Covent Garden, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace and the West End as the capital eased back into peacetime. Barely twenty minutes long, it works as a snapshot of London before postwar rebuilding got properly underway.

Give Us A Clue — Talking Pictures TV, 6:30pm

Michael Parkinson hosts this 1985 edition of the charades panel show (series 1, episode 14), with a guest list running to Bella Emberg, William Gaunt, John Inman, Rula Lenska, Anna Quayle and Spike Milligan. A reminder of how starry a mid-1980s game show line-up could get.

Out of Town — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

Series 1, episode 38 of the rural strand, first broadcast in 1981. This edition splits its half hour between lambing season at a sheep farm and a Dorset angler on the river Frome trying to land a fish on his hundredth birthday.

Travelling Man — Talking Pictures TV, 7:30pm

Leigh Lawson plays Lomax, closing in on the man who framed him, in this 1985 episode titled Blow Up (series 2, episode 6). A Fleet Street reporter offers to help, but it’s Lomax’s girlfriend who actually turns up the real lead.

An Englishman Abroad — Talking Pictures TV, 8:35pm

Alan Bennett’s 1983 television drama, directed by John Schlesinger, dramatises a real encounter: actress Coral Browne, playing herself, runs into the exiled spy Guy Burgess on a trip to Moscow. Alan Bates plays Burgess and Charles Gray also appears.

From Here to Eternity — Talking Pictures TV, 9:50pm

Fred Zinnemann’s 1953 adaptation of James Jones’s novel is tonight’s headline picture, with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr leading a cast built around a US Army base in Hawaii in the months before Pearl Harbor. Clift’s private is punished by his company for refusing to box for the regiment, while Lancaster’s sergeant carries on an affair with his commanding officer’s wife. It picked up eight Oscars, including best picture, and still holds up as one of the strongest studio dramas of its decade.

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?

Wednesday evening opens gently with the short So This Is London 1948 at 6:10pm, then Give Us A Clue at 6:30pm, a 1985 edition hosted by Michael Parkinson with Bella Emberg, William Gaunt, John Inman, Rula Lenska, Anna Quayle and Spike Milligan among the guests. Out of Town follows at 7pm and Travelling Man at 7:30pm, before Alan Bennett’s An Englishman Abroad takes the 8:35pm slot. Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity, with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr, closes out primetime at 9:50pm. 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.

From Here to Eternity at 9:50pm is the one worth staying in for tonight. Fred Zinnemann’s 1953 drama, with Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Deborah Kerr anchoring a US Army base in the run-up to Pearl Harbor, is exactly the kind of prestige picture this channel exists to keep in circulation. Tune in earlier for An Englishman Abroad at 8:35pm if you’d rather have Alan Bennett’s account of Guy Burgess in Moscow before the mood turns.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide