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. Saturday 15 August 2026 runs archive drama into the evening before Jack Lee’s 1953 prison drama Turn the Key Softly takes the late slot. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Saturday 15 August 2026 (Full Listings)

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

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Saturday’s overnight run opens with Caroline Munro previewing next week’s Cellar Club at 12:15am, ahead of Compton Bennett’s 1952 war drama Gift Horse, Trevor Howard commanding a worn-out Royal Navy destroyer against a difficult crew and the German fleet in 1940, with Richard Attenborough among the crew. A 2021 documentary, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster, follows at 2:25am, Ron Perlman and Guillermo del Toro among those tracing the actor’s life and the horror genre he came to define. The Vise brings a 1954 case at 4:30am (series 1, episode 12), Ron Randell’s June Belmont striking up a roulette partnership with Martin Benson’s Carlos Rodrigues, before The Detectives closes the night at 5am (series 3, episode 1), Robert Taylor leading his squad through Tobey’s Place with Adam West in the ranks.

Boris Karloff returns at 6am in Colonel March Investigates, running Scotland Yard’s Department of Queer Complaints through three odd cases with Joan Sims and Richard Wattis. Mike Reid hosts a 1981 edition of the children’s game show Runaround from 7:20am, prizes including a vintage police car among the usual haul of construction kits. The 1997 adventure serial Legend of the Hidden City continues at 7:50am (series 1, episode 26), and a 1958 William Tell rounds off breakfast at 8:25am (series 1, episode 7), Conrad Phillips’ Swiss hero given a chance to save condemned collaborators from the noose.

The morning’s run of adventure serials keeps going with Batman at 9am (series 3, episode 22), Adam West and Burt Ward up against Shame after he takes Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl hostage. Hawkeye & the Last of the Mohicans follows at 9:30am (series 1, episode 16), John Hart and a young James Doohan caught between two warring Mingo tribesmen, then Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons at 10am (series 1, episode 25) and Supercar at 10:30am (series 1, episode 5) keep the puppetry going. Robert Shaw’s The Buccaneers airs at 11am (series 1, episode 36), before Richard Greene’s Adventures of Robin Hood closes the strand at 11:30am (series 2, episode 18), enlisting a thief’s help to recover royal jewels for the King.

The Great Van Robbery, a 1959 crime drama directed by Max Varnel, takes 12pm, Denis Shaw’s Interpol detective chasing a thief who has banked his loot in Rio de Janeiro. Zoltan Korda’s 1939 adventure The Four Feathers follows at 1:20pm, John Clements and Ralph Richardson in the story of an officer trying to live down an accusation of cowardice. Whiplash brings a 1961 case to 3:35pm (series 1, episode 33), Peter Graves searching the Australian outback for a friend who turns up dead, before Gift Horse repeats at 4:10pm to close out the afternoon.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

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

Look At Life Over and Under — Talking Pictures TV, 6:15pm

A ten-minute slice of Rank’s old Look At Life documentary strand, this 1960 instalment tours the bridge-building boom that came with Britain’s expanding road network. Brisk and dated in exactly the way that makes these shorts worth catching.

Dick Turpin — Talking Pictures TV, 6:25pm

Series one nears its end with “The Turncoat” (episode 11). Richard O’Sullivan’s highwayman is dragged into recovering a stolen letter after Spiker is waylaid en route to Sir John Glutton, with Forbes Collins among the cast.

Maigret — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

Rupert Davies packs a pipe and a change of scenery for “My Friend the Inspector” (episode 8), called away to the island of Porquerolles when a killing disturbs the calm. One of the stronger entries in this run of the BBC’s early-1960s series.

The Duchess of Duke Street — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

“The Patriots” (series 2, episode 7) turns domestic when Gemma Jones’s Louisa is warned that her hotel has been sheltering spies. Alan Gifford and Derek Farr round out the guest cast.

Francis Durbridge’s Melissa — Talking Pictures TV, 9:05pm

The third and closing part of the 1974 BBC thriller finds Peter Barkworth’s Guy Foster, framed for his wife’s murder, finally closing the trap on her killer. Ronald Fraser and Joan Benham complete the cast.

Turn The Key Softly — Talking Pictures TV, 10:10pm

This is the night’s real event. Jack Lee’s 1953 drama, adapted from John Brophy’s novel, follows three women walking out of Holloway on the same post-war morning to face very different versions of freedom: Yvonne Mitchell drawn back towards a small-time crook, Kathleen Harrison’s pensioner unable to shake a shoplifting habit, and Joan Collins, in one of her first significant screen roles, hoping to leave the streets behind. It’s the sort of social-realist drama Talking Pictures TV schedules better than anyone else on British television.

EuroTrash — Talking Pictures TV, 11:45pm

The 1997 late-night curio winds the day down with French performer Lova Moor and a look inside a Russian hippy university. A relic of its decade, and unmistakably so.

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?

Archive drama runs through early evening, with Maigret at 7pm and The Duchess of Duke Street at 8pm, followed by the closing part of Francis Durbridge’s Melissa at 9:05pm. Jack Lee’s 1953 film Turn the Key Softly, starring Yvonne Mitchell, Joan Collins and Kathleen Harrison, takes the late slot at 10:10pm, and EuroTrash closes the night at 11:45pm.

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.

Turn the Key Softly is the one to catch tonight, at 10:10pm. Jack Lee’s 1953 drama isn’t a forgotten masterpiece, but it treats its three ex-prisoners with a seriousness British cinema rarely gave women in trouble, and it’s worth seeing for Joan Collins alone, years before the roles that made her famous. The 7pm run holds up well too: proper, unhurried drama, the sort of thing that used to fill a Saturday night before anyone thought to call it comfort viewing.

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