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

Updated: 20 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. Sunday 20 September 2026 opens in the small hours with Confessions of a Driving Instructor just after 1:30am, then The Golden Disc and an episode of One Step Beyond carry the schedule towards Honey West at 5:30am. Midnight At Madame Tussauds opens the day proper at 6am, then Noel Cronin’s own What’s On TPTV segment, The Lucy Show, Sherlock Holmes and The Jackals fill the rest of breakfast. What Every Woman Wants carries the late morning towards lunchtime, before Batman and The Guinea Pig fill midday. Scotland Yard, a Look At Life short and For the Love of Ada carry the afternoon into The Man from U.N.C.L.E at 4pm and The Footage Detectives at 5pm. The evening runs Enemy At The Door, Blithe Spirit, Fox and The Boys From Brazil. Full breakdown below.

Talking Pictures TV Schedule: Sunday 20 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Talking Pictures TV schedule for Sunday 20 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 Confessions of a Driving Instructor just after 1:30am, then The Golden Disc and an episode of One Step Beyond carry the small hours towards Honey West at 5:30am.

The day proper opens with Midnight At Madame Tussauds at 6am, then Noel Cronin’s own What’s On TPTV segment leads into The Lucy Show, Sherlock Holmes and The Jackals through breakfast. What Every Woman Wants fills the late morning, before Batman and The Guinea Pig carry into lunchtime. Scotland Yard, a Look At Life instalment and For the Love of Ada close out the afternoon towards The Man from U.N.C.L.E at 4pm and The Footage Detectives at 5pm, ahead of the evening line-up below.

Talking Pictures TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Talking Pictures TV primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 20 September 2026.

Enemy At The Door — Talking Pictures TV, 6pm

Enemy At The Door continues its Channel Islands-set wartime drama, following islanders and the occupying German garrison through the everyday compromises of life under occupation.

Blithe Spirit — Talking Pictures TV, 7pm

Blithe Spirit brings Noël Coward’s stage comedy to the screen: a novelist’s seance backfires and his late first wife turns up as an uninvited spectre, to the fury of the wife he actually has now.

Fox — Talking Pictures TV, 9pm

Fox opens tonight with its first episode, Euston Films’ late-1970s drama about a London criminal family, the kind of gritty character-driven serial the channel favours over straightforward genre fare.

The Boys From Brazil — Talking Pictures TV, 10pm

The Boys From Brazil is the Cold War-era thriller in which a Nazi hunter investigates a plot involving Josef Mengele and a scheme to clone Adolf Hitler, with Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier leading one of the schedule’s starrier evening films.

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?

Enemy At The Door opens the evening at 6pm, then Blithe Spirit takes the 7pm slot. Fox begins a new run at 9pm, and the Cold War thriller The Boys From Brazil closes the evening at 10pm. 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: Enemy At The Door and Blithe Spirit carry the pre-9pm hours, then Fox opens a new run as the night’s centrepiece, before The Boys From Brazil, one of the starrier archive films in this week’s schedule, closes out the night.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Freeview Films Tonight