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

Published: 1 September 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. Wednesday 2 September 2026 runs 23 programmes through the day, opening on late-1950s genre pictures before daytime settles into archive serials, a couple of short films and a run of Look At Life shorts. There are no split films to untangle tonight: The Ship That Died of Shame takes the two hours from 5pm, then Out of Town, Boy With A Flute and Van der Valk run through early primetime before Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer, a two-hour 1992 Jeremy Brett film, becomes the night’s centrepiece from 9:10pm. Carrington VC, David Niven’s 1955 court-martial drama, closes out after 11pm. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Wednesday 2 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Wednesday 2 September 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Wednesday’s schedule opens in the small hours with two features, Bluebeard at 12:55am and Two on the Tiles at 2:20am, then a short archive item, 1960s London – Glimpses, at 3:50am. Two archive series carry the night towards dawn: Target: The Corruptors (series 1, episode 34) at 4am and The Man from U.N.C.L.E (series 1, episode 12) at 5am.

Breakfast holds Up In The Air at 6am and Dentist In The Chair at 7:15am, then a short catch-up strand, What’s On TPTV With Noel, at 8:50am. The morning’s main feature is My Man Godfrey at 9am, ahead of The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk at 10:50am.

The afternoon opens on a Look At Life short, Flight Deck, at 12:45pm, then The Buccaneers (series 1, episode 25) at 1pm and a documentary item, John Huston: Adventures of a Free Soul, at 1:35pm. The Pale Faced Girl follows at 2:40pm, another Look At Life short, All Through The Night, bridges into Dial 999 (series 1, episode 33) at 3:30pm, and That’s My Boy (series 2, episode 2) takes 4pm ahead of a final short, Aberdeen: The Silver City, at 4:35pm. Early evening belongs to The Ship That Died of Shame from 5pm — see below.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 2 September 2026.

Out of Town — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

Out of Town takes the 7pm slot, Jack Hargreaves’s 1986 countryside programme, one of the archive strands the channel returns to often.

Boy With A Flute — Talking Pictures TV, 7:30pm

Filling the half-hour before Van der Valk, Boy With A Flute is a 1964 second feature from director Montgomery Tully, with Jeremy Hawk, Freda Jackson and Ursula Jeans leading the cast. Mrs Winters decides to part with her Salviani painting, only to discover that selling it is nowhere near as simple as she’d hoped.

Van der Valk — Talking Pictures TV, 8:05pm

The 8:05pm hour belongs to Van der Valk (series 1, episode 2), the 1972 detective series with Barry Foster as the Amsterdam police inspector. Tonight’s case is “Destroying Angel”.

Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer — Talking Pictures TV, 9:10pm

Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer takes the 9:10pm slot for two hours. Jeremy Brett is Holmes and Edward Hardwicke is Watson in this 1992 feature-length case, with Robert Hardy as the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton, directed by Peter Hammond.

Carrington VC — Talking Pictures TV, 11:15pm

At 11:15pm, it’s Carrington VC, Anthony Asquith’s 1955 court-martial drama starring David Niven and Margaret Leighton.

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 with no split films. The Ship That Died of Shame opens the early evening at 5pm, Out of Town and Boy With A Flute follow at 7pm and 7:30pm, then Van der Valk takes 8:05pm. Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer, a 1992 feature-length case with Jeremy Brett, is the two-hour centrepiece from 9:10pm, and Carrington VC closes the night at 11:15pm. 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.

Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer is the one to catch tonight, from 9:10pm. Jeremy Brett’s Holmes was the definitive television version for a generation, and this feature-length case, with Robert Hardy as the blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton, is Brett near the peak of his run in the role, playing opposite Edward Hardwicke’s Watson. Earlier on, Van der Valk at 8:05pm is worth a look too: Barry Foster’s Amsterdam inspector was a fixture of British Sunday nights through the 1970s, and the theme tune alone, “Eye Level”, is still better remembered than most of the episodes.

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