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

Published: 18 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. Saturday 19 September 2026 opens in the small hours with Count Dracula just before 1am, then Thunder In The City and a Look At Life short carry the schedule towards a Man from U.N.C.L.E rerun at 5am. San Ferry Ann opens the day proper at 6am, then Marilyn fills the rest of breakfast. A run of 1960s adventure series — Legend of the Hidden City, William Tell, Hawkeye & the Last of the Mohicans, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Supercar and The Adventures of Robin Hood — carries the late morning towards lunchtime, before The Giant Claw and H.M.S Defiant fill the early afternoon. Dial 999 and The Riddle Of The Sands carry the rest of the afternoon towards early evening. The evening opens with Noel Cronin’s What’s On TPTV segment and an episode of Dick Turpin, then Maigret, The Duchess of Duke Street and a Play For Today drama lead into a late-night run closing on the Paul Kindersley interview and his film The Burning Baby. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Saturday 19 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Saturday 19 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 Count Dracula just before 1am, then Thunder In The City and a short Look At Life instalment carry the small hours towards a Man from U.N.C.L.E rerun at 5am.

The day proper opens with San Ferry Ann at 6am, then Marilyn carries breakfast. A run of archive adventure series — Legend of the Hidden City, William Tell, Hawkeye & the Last of the Mohicans, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Supercar and The Adventures of Robin Hood — fills the late morning into lunchtime, before the films The Giant Claw and H.M.S Defiant carry into the afternoon. Dial 999 and The Riddle Of The Sands close out 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, Saturday 19 September 2026.

What’s On TPTV With Noel — Talking Pictures TV, 6:15pm

Channel founder Noel Cronin’s own ten-minute strand, pointing viewers towards films and series coming up that he doesn’t want them to miss. It’s the closest thing the schedule has to a friendly recommendation from the person who built the archive.

Dick Turpin — Talking Pictures TV, 6:25pm

The third outing this run for the 1979 highwayman adventure series, one of the archive dramas the channel keeps coming back to rather than a one-off pickup.

Maigret — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

Georges Simenon’s Parisian detective opens primetime with a thirteenth episode, part of a run the channel leans on heavily for its early-evening drama slot.

The Duchess of Duke Street — Talking Pictures TV, 8pm

The Edwardian drama about a cook turned hotelier continues into its second series, exactly the kind of slow-paced period drama this channel programmes better than most of Freeview.

Play For Today — Talking Pictures TV, 9:05pm

A single drama from the BBC’s long-running anthology strand, the sort of one-off play that used to be a primetime staple and now barely survives anywhere except in archive schedules like this one.

EuroTrash — Talking Pictures TV, 10:55pm

A very late-night outing for the Channel 4 continental clip show, decades after it first unsettled Friday-night viewers with its mix of subtitled oddities and outright smut.

Paul Kindersley Interview — Talking Pictures TV, 11:30pm

A short sit-down with the artist and filmmaker ahead of the broadcast of his own film, giving some context before it airs.

The Burning Baby — Talking Pictures TV, 11:40pm

Paul Kindersley’s 2020 film, a strange, folk-horror-tinged piece rarely shown on British television, closes out the night straight after his interview.

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?

What’s On TPTV With Noel opens the evening at 6:15pm, then Dick Turpin leads into primetime. Maigret takes the 7pm slot, followed by The Duchess of Duke Street at 8pm and a Play For Today drama at 9:05pm. EuroTrash airs at 10:55pm, and a Paul Kindersley interview precedes his film The Burning Baby at 11:40pm. 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: Noel Cronin’s own segment and an episode of Dick Turpin open proceedings, Maigret and The Duchess of Duke Street carry the pre-9pm hour, and a Play For Today drama is the night’s centrepiece, before EuroTrash and the Paul Kindersley interview lead into his own film to close out the night.

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