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. Thursday 13 August 2026 keeps to the channel’s usual weekday shape: archive serials and features through the day, then Lewis Gilbert’s 1954 war drama The Sea Shall Not Have Them takes the 9:20pm slot.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Thursday 13 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Thursday 13 August 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

The overnight run opens with Zoltan Korda’s 1939 adventure The Four Feathers at 12:15am, John Clements working to shake off the taint of cowardice by secretly helping the comrades he abandoned, with Ralph Richardson and C. Aubrey Smith in support. Women Without Men, a 1956 drama from directors Elmo Williams and Bert Glazer, follows at 2:30am, Beverly Michaels and Joan Rice caught up in a New Year’s Eve arrest that gets in the way of a reunion. A Wayne Rogers and Robert Bray instalment of the Western serial Stagecoach West rides through at 4am (series 1, episode 22), before Film Noir’s look back at the genre’s Hollywood heyday opens at 5am (series 1, episode 2).

John Gilling’s 1948 crime drama A Gunman Has Escaped takes the 6am hour, John Harvey and John Fitzgerald among a trio of armed robbers on the run after killing a passer-by. Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1958 drama Behind the Mask follows at 7:05am, Michael Redgrave and Tony Britton caught up as a newly qualified surgeon shields a colleague after a patient’s death. Roy Ward Baker’s 1950 thriller Highly Dangerous sends Margaret Lockwood and Dane Clark into a Balkan country to investigate germ warfare from 9:05am.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1949 drama The Small Back Room closes out the morning from 10:50am, David Farrar’s bomb disposal expert wrestling with his own nerves through the German raids, alongside Jack Hawkins and Kathleen Byron. A William Russell episode of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot airs at 1pm (series 1, episode 23), a court weighing up a disputed inheritance, before Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 mystery Rebecca, with Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and George Sanders, takes the 1:30pm slot.

Val Guest’s 1962 mystery Jigsaw closes out the afternoon from 4:05pm, Jack Warner’s Detective Fellows piecing together a murder against a well-shot 1960s Brighton backdrop.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Thursday 13 August 2026.

Look At Life Solent Saturday — Talking Pictures TV, 6:10pm

The evening opens with a ten-minute newsreel short from 1959, one of the Rank cinema series that used to play ahead of the main feature. This one turns its camera on a weekend’s sailing and boating around the Solent, a stretch of water that’s been drawing yacht crews for generations.

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

Michael Aspel presents this 1996 instalment on the theme of alien abduction, working through witness accounts of so-called close encounters. It’s an odd fit alongside the channel’s usual archive drama, but the mid-90s clips have their own period charm by now.

The Brothers — Talking Pictures TV, 6:55pm

This 1974 episode, titled Power For Sale, catches Jennifer dropping news that leaves Ted reeling, while a Dutch businessman named Van Der Moewe gets his first meeting with the Board. Patrick O’Connell and Jonathan Newth lead the boardroom soap that made BBC1’s Sunday nights in the 1970s.

Mark Saber — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

Donald Gray plays the one-armed detective in this 1956 case, Find a Body, where a client convinced his wife is out to kill him arranges weekly check-ins with Saber, then simply fails to show. Basil Dignam co-stars in a half-hour that moves fast by design.

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

A working men’s club variety bill from 1974, with The Crickets running through Everyday and Think It Over, Johnnie Ray taking on a trio of numbers including Somebody Stole My Gal, and Yana closing with three songs of her own. Colin Crompton’s compering keeps the format’s fake-club conceit going throughout.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them — Talking Pictures TV, 9:20pm

Lewis Gilbert’s 1954 war film puts a downed RAF crew adrift in a dinghy on the North Sea in 1944, waiting on rescue and talking through their lives as the cold sets in. Michael Redgrave, Dirk Bogarde and Bonar Colleano head a strong ensemble cast in one of the better British war pictures of its decade, and it’s the film worth clearing the evening for.

The Comic — Talking Pictures TV, 11:10pm

Carl Reiner’s 1969 film closes the night, Dick Van Dyke playing a silent-era comedian whose career gets swallowed up by his own vanity. Mickey Rooney and Michele Lee round out a cast built to explore fame’s uglier side, well after the star has stopped being funny.

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?

Look At Life Solent Saturday opens the evening at 6:10pm, followed by Strange But True? at 6:20pm and The Brothers at 6:55pm. Mark Saber takes the 8pm slot and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club follows at 8:30pm, before the 1954 war film The Sea Shall Not Have Them closes out primetime from 9:20pm. The Comic rounds off the night at 11:10pm.

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.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them is the one to catch tonight. Lewis Gilbert’s 1954 war drama gives Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde a downed aircrew’s slow wait for rescue on the North Sea, and it holds up as one of the more thoughtful British war pictures of its era. The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club brings a lighter half hour at 8:30pm, its fake working men’s club format wrapped around a genuine run of 1970s variety turns, and Mark Saber’s brisk detective plot makes a decent bridge between the two.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Films on TV This Week