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

Published: 31 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 1 September 2026 runs 23 programmes through the day, opening on late-1950s and early-1960s genre pictures before daytime settles into archive serials, a short film or two and a vintage sitcom rerun. This evening has no split films to untangle: a 15-minute short about Glasgow’s last tram opens at 6:10pm, three archive TV series follow it in a row, and then Dulcima, John Mills and Carol White’s 1971 drama, takes the full two-hour 9pm slot as the night’s centrepiece. Fortean TV and Strip Tease Murder close out after 11pm. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Tuesday 1 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Tuesday 1 September 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Tuesday’s schedule opens in the small hours with two features from very different corners of British cinema: The Stranglers of Bombay at 12am, Terence Fisher’s 1959 Hammer adventure with Guy Rolfe investigating the Thuggee cult in 1830s India, then Beat Girl at 1:40am, the 1960 Soho teen-delinquency drama that gave Adam Faith his screen debut alongside Christopher Lee. Two archive anthology strands carry the night towards dawn, Film Noir at 3:25am and The Veil at 4:25am, before a repeat from The Man from U.N.C.L.E’s first series at 5am.

Breakfast holds The Common Touch at 6am, John Baxter’s 1941 wartime drama, then two short archive items either side of 8am. The morning’s main feature is The Stars Look Down at 9:45am, Carol Reed’s 1940 mining drama adapted from the A.J. Cronin novel, ahead of a short Petula Clark item and Highway to Battle, a 1961 war picture, at 11:40am.

The afternoon opens on William Tell at 1pm (series 1, episode 25), the ITV adventure series that made Conrad Phillips’s name, then a Dickens adaptation, A Tale of Two Cities, at 1:35pm. A short, Symphony for Steam, bridges into That’s My Boy at 4pm (series 2, episode 1), Mollie Sugden’s ITV sitcom about a housekeeper who turns out to be her employer’s birth mother, and The Break, Lance Comfort’s 1963 second-feature thriller with Tony Britton, closes the afternoon at 4:35pm. Primetime proper opens from 6:10pm — see below.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Tuesday 1 September 2026.

Nine, Dalmuir West — Talking Pictures TV, 6:10pm

A 15-minute short opens the evening. It’s Kevin Brownlow’s first film, shot in 1962 on the last weekend Glasgow’s trams ran, following the number 9 service to Dalmuir West as enthusiasts lined the streets to see it off.

Whiplash — Talking Pictures TV, 6:25pm

Whiplash, the late-1950s/early-1960s Western series starring Peter Graves as stagecoach-line owner Chris Cobb, takes the next half hour (series 1, episode 33).

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

The Cold War spy series follows at 6:55pm with The Arabian Affair (series 2, episode 7), Illya Kuryakin on the trail of a stolen weapon. This channel’s own 5am repeat earlier today was from the show’s first series, so the two showings today don’t line up.

Buccaneer — Talking Pictures TV, 7:55pm

Buccaneer, the BBC’s short-lived 1980 drama about a struggling air-freight airline, takes the 7:55pm hour (series 1, episode 7), with Bryan Marshall as the pilot at the centre of it. It never got a second series — the Bristol Britannia used in filming crashed shortly after shooting wrapped.

Dulcima — Talking Pictures TV, 9pm

The two-hour centrepiece of the night. Dulcima is Frank Nesbitt’s 1971 adaptation of an H.E. Bates story, chosen as the British entry at that year’s Berlin Film Festival. John Mills plays Parker, a miserly Gloucestershire widower; Carol White is Dulcima, the farmer’s daughter who takes on his housekeeping and plays his interest in her for what she can get, while carrying on with his gamekeeper, played by Stuart Wilson. It’s a quieter film than most of the channel’s evening fare, and it doesn’t end gently.

Fortean TV — Talking Pictures TV, 11pm

Fortean TV, the Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe’s mid-1990s series on the paranormal and unexplained, takes the 11pm slot. The feed’s episode number for tonight doesn’t hold up — series 1 ran to only ten instalments — so it’s safest to name it by content rather than by number.

Strip Tease Murder — Talking Pictures TV, 11:35pm

The night closes on Strip Tease Murder, a 1961 Ernest Morris B-picture in which John Hewer’s comedian-turned-detective investigates after his stripper wife, played by Ann Lynn, is found dead on stage at a Soho club.

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?

Tonight runs as one unbroken sequence. Three archive series lead off from 6:10pm — Whiplash, The Man from U.N.C.L.E and Buccaneer — before Dulcima at 9pm, John Mills and Carol White’s 1971 drama and the two-hour centrepiece of the evening. Fortean TV and the B-picture Strip Tease Murder close things out after 11pm. 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.

Dulcima is the one to catch tonight, from 9pm. It’s a quieter, sadder film than most of what fills this schedule: John Mills as a miserly Gloucestershire widower, Carol White as the housekeeper working him for what she can get while her real attachment is to his gamekeeper. It was Britain’s entry at Berlin the year it came out, which is more prestige than this channel’s evening films usually carry. Earlier on, Buccaneer at 7:55pm is worth a look for anyone curious about British television’s stranger dead ends — a BBC drama about an air-freight airline that got a single series because the actual aircraft used in filming crashed shortly after shooting wrapped.

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