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

Published: 17 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. Friday 18 September 2026 opens in the small hours with H.M.S Defiant at 1:40am, then Look At Life: The Divided City and Burke’s Law carry the schedule towards a Man from U.N.C.L.E rerun at 5am. What a Whopper opens the day proper at 6am, then A Question of Suspense fills the rest of breakfast. You Will Remember and Inn For Trouble carry the late morning into lunchtime, before Dial 999 and The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre open the afternoon. The Adventures of Robin Hood, A Woman’s Temptation, That’s My Boy and The Cheaters carry the rest of the afternoon towards early evening. The evening opens with a Rooms double bill, then Z-Cars and Public Eye lead into Haunted at 9:05pm, before Count Dracula closes out the night at 11:25pm. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Friday 18 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Friday 18 September 2026, on Freeview 82.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Talking Pictures TV today

Today’s overnight run opens with H.M.S Defiant at 1:40am, then Look At Life: The Divided City and Burke’s Law carry the small hours towards a Man from U.N.C.L.E rerun at 5am.

The day proper opens with What a Whopper at 6am, then A Question of Suspense carries breakfast. You Will Remember and Inn For Trouble fill the late morning into lunchtime, before Dial 999 and The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre open the afternoon. The Adventures of Robin Hood, A Woman’s Temptation, That’s My Boy and The Cheaters carry the rest of the afternoon towards early evening.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Friday 18 September 2026.

Rooms — Talking Pictures TV, 6pm and 6:30pm

Early evening opens with back-to-back episodes of Rooms, series one’s seventh and eighth instalments — the channel’s routine early-evening drama strand rather than anything picked out specially for tonight.

Z-Cars — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

The archive police procedural Z-Cars takes the 7pm hour, this one series three’s 85th episode, drawn from the channel’s deep well of vintage drama.

Public Eye — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

Alfred Burke’s world-weary private investigator Frank Marker gets the 8pm slot, series six’s seventh episode, one of the longest-serving archive imports in the schedule.

Cellar Club with Caroline Munro — Talking Pictures TV, 9pm

Caroline Munro’s short horror-hosting segment opens the late slot just ahead of tonight’s film, the 535th outing in its own long-running sequence.

Haunted — Talking Pictures TV, 9:05pm

The evening’s one proper film is Haunted, running through to gone 11pm and giving the night its main event.

Cellar Club with Caroline Munro — Talking Pictures TV, 11:20pm

A second, shorter Cellar Club segment bridges into the night’s closing film.

Count Dracula — Talking Pictures TV, 11:25pm

Count Dracula closes out the schedule, taking the channel into the small hours with a second helping of horror.

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.

For an archive channel, the range is remarkable: across 48 days Talking Pictures TV drew 1,088 slots from 577 different titles, making it the second least repetitive channel on Freeview after Film4. our study of repeats on UK television has the full table.

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 opens with a two-episode run of Rooms at 6pm and 6:30pm, then Z-Cars and Public Eye lead into Haunted at 9:05pm, following a short Cellar Club with Caroline Munro segment. Count Dracula closes out the night at 11:25pm. 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.

Tonight’s evening runs the channel’s familiar shape: a Rooms double bill opens proceedings, Z-Cars and Public Eye carry the pre-9pm hour, and Haunted is the night’s one film, before Count Dracula closes things out just before midnight.

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