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

Published: 24 August 2026

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 25 August 2026 runs 23 programmes through the day, and the evening leans on archive drama rather than films: a 1945 Ealing melodrama holds most of the 6pm hour, a run of 1960s adventure series carries the channel to primetime, and Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes takes the 9pm slot as the night’s centrepiece. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Tuesday 25 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Tuesday 25 August 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Tuesday’s overnight stretch opens at 12:25am with Sea of Sand, the 1958 Long Range Desert Group adventure with Richard Attenborough, John Gregson and Michael Craig, before Svengali fills 2:25am. The short Kent in the 1970s – Glimpses runs at 4:05am, then two archive series carry things through to breakfast: The Veil (4:25am, series 1, episode 4) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E (5am, series 1, episode 6).

The Happiness of Three Women opens the day proper at 6am, followed by Juggernaut, Boris Karloff’s 1936 poisoning thriller, at 7:35am and The Big Bluff from 8:50am.

The short The Better Milk Story fills 10:20am, then The Battle of the Rails, René Clément’s 1946 account of French railway workers sabotaging German supply trains, runs from 11:05am.

The short Look At Life: Everything Stops For Tea opens the afternoon at 12:45pm, then William Tell continues its run at 1pm (series 1, episode 24) ahead of Jassy, the 1947 Gainsborough melodrama with Margaret Lockwood, from 1:30pm. Dial 999 takes the 3:30pm slot (series 1, episode 19), a That’s My Boy episode follows at 4pm (series 1, episode 2), and Pink String and Sealing Wax, the channel’s main afternoon film, takes over from 4:35pm and runs into the early evening.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Tuesday 25 August 2026. There’s no film in the 6pm hour tonight, but a Victorian melodrama starting mid-afternoon runs on into it, and Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes gets the night’s main event slot at 9pm.

Pink String and Sealing Wax — Talking Pictures TV, 4:35pm

Robert Hamer’s first solo feature as director, from 1945, is a Victorian Brighton poisoning plot: a pub landlady played by Googie Withers cosies up to a chemist’s innocent son to get her hands on the arsenic she needs for her husband. Gordon Jackson and Mervyn Johns are also in it. It runs past 6pm, taking a chunk of the hour before the evening’s archive strands start.

Food Flash Dried Eggs 1942 — Talking Pictures TV, 6:20pm

A five-minute wartime short on rationed dried eggs, straight after Pink String and Sealing Wax finishes.

Whiplash: The Magic Wire — Talking Pictures TV, 6:25pm

Peter Graves’ outback adventure series, built around the coach line he runs across the Australian goldfields, turns to the building of the country’s first telegraph wire.

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

Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo and David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin go after a dealer trading in art looted by the Nazis, in a 1965 episode from the spy show’s second season.

Buccaneer: The Thin End — Talking Pictures TV, 7:55pm

The 1980 cargo-airline drama has Mason trying to spring Tony from an African prison while a delivery back at base turns into its own headache.

Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four — Talking Pictures TV, 9pm

Tonight’s centrepiece is a proper Granada production: Jeremy Brett’s Holmes and Edward Hardwicke’s Watson, directed by Peter Hammond in 1987, working through Conan Doyle’s tale of a stolen Agra treasure and a vow of revenge that reaches London decades later. Jenny Seagrove plays Mary Morstan, the client who brings Holmes the case, and John Thaw turns up as the convict at the centre of it. Brett’s Holmes had already settled into the role by this point, and the two-hour running time gives the plot room the earlier Baker Street outings didn’t have.

Fortean TV — Talking Pictures TV, 11:05pm

Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe’s mid-1990s strangeness strand goes looking for the Men in Black tonight.

The Siege of Sidney Street — Talking Pictures TV, 11:40pm

A 1960 dramatisation of the real 1911 East End siege, with Donald Sinden and Nicole Berger, directed by the team of Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker.

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?

Pink String and Sealing Wax opens the evening at 4:35pm, Robert Hamer’s 1945 Ealing melodrama starring Googie Withers, Gordon Jackson and Mervyn Johns, and holds the schedule to 6:20pm. A short on wartime dried eggs bridges the next five minutes, then two archive adventure series, Whiplash and The Man from U.N.C.L.E, run through to 7:55pm, when Buccaneer takes over. Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four, Peter Hammond’s 1987 film with Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke and Jenny Seagrove, runs from 9pm to 11:05pm, and the night closes with Fortean TV and the 1960 drama The Siege of Sidney Street.

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.

Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four is the one to catch tonight, from 9pm. Jeremy Brett’s Holmes was already the definitive television version by 1987, and the two-hour slot gives Conan Doyle’s plot more room to breathe than the earlier hour-long Granada episodes managed. Pink String and Sealing Wax earlier in the afternoon is the stronger pick if a film is what you’re after, and The Siege of Sidney Street gives the night a proper piece of British history before midnight.

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