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. Friday 21 August 2026 runs 21 programmes through the day without a single repeat. The evening builds through three archive series, Rumpole of the Bailey at 6pm, Z-Cars at 7pm and Public Eye at 8pm, before the channel hands its whole late slot to one film: Mort D’un Pourri, a 1977 French thriller with Alain Delon, Ornella Muti and Klaus Kinski, runs from 9:05pm for two and a half hours. Caroline Munro introduces the horror double that closes the night, Cellar Club at 11:35pm and Supernatural at 11:40pm. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Friday 21 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Friday 21 August 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Friday’s overnight run opens at 1:10am with I, The Jury, followed by Castle Sinister at 2:55am. Burke’s Law takes 4am for its second episode, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E closes out the small hours at 5am with its fourth outing.

Breakfast opens at 6am with Return of a Stranger, a 1937 title straight from the archive vaults, then The Hangman Waits at 7:25am and Big Boy Rides Again at 8:40am.

Two well-cast films fill the morning slot: Miss Robin Hood at 9:50am, a 1952 comedy caper starring Margaret Rutherford, and So Long at the Fair at 11:25am, a 1950 mystery with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde.

The afternoon runs through The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre at 1:05pm (its sixth episode), The Adventures of Robin Hood at 2:15pm (episode 24) and Ghost Ship at 2:50pm, a 1953 chiller. Look At Life: Ringing the Changes, one of the channel’s short archive documentary inserts, takes 4:20pm, and The Cheaters closes out the afternoon at 4:30pm with its 25th episode. A Family At War opens the early evening at 5pm with its third episode of series two, ahead of Rumpole of the Bailey at 6pm.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Friday 21 August 2026.

Rumpole of the Bailey — Talking Pictures TV, 6pm

Leo McKern is Horace Rumpole in “Rumpole and the Honourable Member” (series 1, episode 3), from the show’s earliest run and still one of its sharpest: a barrister who treats the Old Bailey as his own personal stage, needling judges and colleagues with equal relish.

Z-Cars — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

Z-Cars follows at 7pm with “Clues Are What You Think” (series 1, episode 81), a 1964 outing built around Stratford Johns as the abrasive Detective Chief Inspector Barlow. The series did more than any other to drag British police drama out of the cosy village setting and onto a grittier new-town beat.

Public Eye — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

Alfred Burke’s private investigator Frank Marker takes the 8pm hour in “Many a Slip” (series 6, episode 3), a 1972 case for a character built deliberately against type: shabby, often skint, rarely triumphant. It’s one of the more unglamorous detective leads British television produced, and better for it.

Mort D’un Pourri — Talking Pictures TV, 9:05pm

Mort D’un Pourri, shown under its English title Death of a Corrupt Man, takes over the rest of the evening from 9:05pm and runs a full two and a half hours — effectively the whole of Talking Pictures TV’s late-night schedule tonight. Georges Lautner directs a cast led by Alain Delon, with Ornella Muti and Klaus Kinski alongside him, star power well above what this slot usually gets. It’s a 1977 French thriller, and a rare chance to catch it on British free-to-air television.

Cellar Club with Caroline Munro — Talking Pictures TV, 11:35pm

Caroline Munro’s five-minute introduction slot returns at 11:35pm (series 1, episode 525) ahead of tonight’s closing feature, keeping up a run that’s become one of the channel’s more dependable late-night fixtures.

Supernatural — Talking Pictures TV, 11:40pm

Supernatural closes the night at 11:40pm with “Dorabella” (series 1, episode 8) — the final episode of this 1977 BBC horror anthology, in which each week’s tale was told, parlour-game style, by a member of a club pleading for their life.

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?

Three archive series open the evening — Rumpole of the Bailey at 6pm, Z-Cars at 7pm and Public Eye at 8pm — before the night’s main event. Mort D’un Pourri, a 1977 French thriller with Alain Delon, Ornella Muti and Klaus Kinski, takes over the whole late slot from 9:05pm for two and a half hours. Caroline Munro’s Cellar Club at 11:35pm leads into Supernatural at 11:40pm to close the night.

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.

Mort D’un Pourri is the one to catch tonight, from 9:05pm. A French political thriller with Alain Delon, Ornella Muti and Klaus Kinski is a rare enough combination on any channel, let alone a free-to-air archive service, and Georges Lautner’s direction gives it more polish than this late slot usually gets. At two and a half hours it’s a real commitment, but it also settles most of the evening’s viewing in one sitting.

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