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

Published: 30 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. Monday 31 August 2026 runs 23 programmes through the day, opening on 1950s genre pictures and short archive items before daytime settles into detective serials, sitcoms and war drama. Neither of tonight’s two features gets an ad-break split: Maigret, the long-running Bruno Cremer detective series, takes the 8pm slot with a Paris murder case, and Borsalino & Co, Jacques Deray’s 1974 gangster sequel starring Alain Delon, closes the night from 9:50pm. The channel’s own archive strand, The Footage Detectives, opens primetime at 7pm digging through unidentified home-movie footage. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Monday 31 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Monday 31 August 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Monday’s schedule opens deep in the small hours with a run of archive shorts and older genre pictures: The Abominable Snowman at 12:55am, running an hour and three-quarters, followed by the comedy Come Back Peter at 2:40am. A short newsreel-style item, Look At Life State Occasions, fills 4:15am, and two 1950s serials carry the schedule to dawn: The Adventures of Robin Hood at 4:30am (series 1, episode 36), the ITC swashbuckler that made Richard Greene’s name, and The Buccaneers at 5am (series 1, episode 35), Robert Shaw’s turn as a Caribbean pirate captain. Supercar, Gerry Anderson’s puppet adventure series, closes out the overnight run at 5:30am (series 1, episode 7).

Breakfast holds The Vise at 6am (series 1, episode 21), an American-made crime anthology of the sort the channel likes to dig up, then two British B-thrillers back to back: Dublin Nightmare at 6:35am and Emergency at 7:50am. The morning opens with a short archive item, Coronation Fair Day 1953, at 9:05am, ahead of Home to Danger at 9:10am. Z-Cars, the BBC’s pioneering police drama, takes 10:30am (series 10, episode 10), and The Embezzler follows at 11:35am.

The afternoon runs another short, Look At Life A Piece of Cake, at 12:50pm, then Richard the Lionheart at 1pm (series 1, episode 25), Dermot Walsh’s ITV adventure series. The October Man, John Mills’s 1947 psychological thriller, takes 1:35pm, and Scotland Yard, the channel’s stock of B-picture crime shorts, follows at 3:25pm (series 1, episode 28). That’s My Boy, a 1930s British comedy, airs at 4pm (series 1, episode 6), before Carrington VC closes the afternoon at 4:35pm, David Niven as the army officer court-martialled over a wartime debt. A short 1983 travelogue, Peter Murray Takes You to Nottingham, bridges into the evening at 6:40pm, and primetime proper opens from 7pm — see below.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Monday 31 August 2026.

Peter Murray Takes You to Nottingham — Talking Pictures TV, 6:40pm

A short one to open the evening. Peter Murray’s 1983 travelogue spends twenty minutes in Nottingham, the kind of regional promotional film the channel is fond of pulling out of storage.

The Footage Detectives — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

The channel’s own strand digs through unidentified archive material at 7pm (series 1, episode 239). Tonight’s reel takes in 1960s footage shot underground in County Durham, a 1970s kitchen party, a home movie from the south of France, and an odd survival from an old advertising campaign: Charlton Heston fronting a milk commercial.

Maigret — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

Bruno Cremer’s Maigret takes the 8pm hour with Maigret’s Mistake (series 4, episode 4), first broadcast in France in 1994 and directed by Joyce Buñuel. A young woman is found dead in a smart Paris apartment, and Maigret works through a list of suspects that includes a nightclub musician, a surgeon, the surgeon’s assistant, his wife, her sister, and the dead woman’s own housekeeper. Cremer’s Maigret is the more world-weary reading of Simenon’s detective, closer to the books than most screen versions manage.

Borsalino & Co — Talking Pictures TV, 9:50pm

Alain Delon returns as gangster Roch Siffredi in Jacques Deray’s 1974 sequel to Borsalino, closing the night from 9:50pm. Siffredi works his way through Marseille’s underworld hunting the men who murdered his old partner, with Riccardo Cucciolla and Daniel Ivernel among the supporting cast. It runs straight through to gone midnight with no break in the schedule.

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?

Two features run back to back tonight, neither broken up. Maigret takes the 8pm slot, Bruno Cremer working a murder in a well-appointed Paris apartment (series 4, episode 4), and Borsalino & Co, Jacques Deray’s 1974 gangster sequel with Alain Delon, follows from 9:50pm. A short 1983 travelogue opens the evening at 6:40pm, and The Footage Detectives, the channel’s own archive strand, runs from 7pm. Check the schedule table above for the full day’s listings.

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.

Maigret is the one to catch tonight, from 8pm. Bruno Cremer’s take on Simenon’s detective is the most measured screen version there’s been, and Maigret’s Mistake gives him a properly knotty case, a murdered young woman and a houseful of suspects all with reasons to lie. Borsalino & Co at 9:50pm is the pick for anyone after something with more swagger, Alain Delon back as Roch Siffredi and working through Marseille’s underworld for the men who killed his old partner.

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