Talking Pictures TV has quietly jumped the queue and arrived on Freely months ahead of schedule – and you can start watching it right now.
The beloved vintage British film and TV channel went live on Freely Channel 36 this week, bringing classic cinema to streaming audiences without needing an aerial for the first time.
If you’ve been battling dodgy reception trying to watch black and white classics on Freeview, this is genuinely good news.
The early arrival catches everyone by surprise. When Freely announced TPTV would join the platform back in October, the launch was scheduled for 2026.
Instead, the channel slipped onto the service with barely any fanfare – though TPTV’s own newsletter this week confirmed they’ve “launched on Freely” and directed fans to Channel 36 – “Another giant leap for the Real ‘Smallest Show on Earth’!”
For the family-run channel broadcasting from a shed in Hertfordshire, it’s another milestone in their remarkable journey from Sky-only launch to becoming one of Britain’s most-watched independent channels.
Background: Freely And The October Announcement
Quick refresher for anyone who hasn’t been following the Freely story.
Launched in April 2024, Freely is Everyone TV’s streaming platform designed to eventually replace traditional Freeview and Freesat. It delivers live channels and on-demand content through your broadband connection – no aerial or satellite dish required.
You get a unified programme guide mixing live TV with catch-up services, so you’re not constantly jumping between iPlayer, ITVX, and everything else. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and 5 all back it.
Right now, it offers 55+ live channels plus loads of on-demand content. The catch? You need a compatible smart TV from brands like Hisense, Bush, Toshiba, Panasonic, Sharp, TCL and Amazon Fire TV – or the brand new £99 Netgem Pleio standalone box that launched this morning, bringing Freely to any TV with an HDMI port.
Back in mid-October, Freely announced a major expansion that would bring 10 new channels to the platform in 2026. Talking Pictures TV topped that list – the channel our readers had been requesting for months.
These additions were set to push Freely’s live streaming channel count past 70 by next year. Now TPTV has beaten that timeline by jumping ahead to November 2025, becoming available well before the other promised channels arrive.
The timing makes sense when you consider the channel already had streaming infrastructure in place. They launched their TPTV Encore apps for Fire TV, iOS, and Android TV late last year.
The missing piece was always a live stream – something Freely now provides.
The Talking Pictures TV Story
Talking Pictures TV is a genuine family business that somehow became one of Britain’s biggest independent broadcasters.
Founded in 2015 by Noel Cronin, his daughter Sarah Cronin-Stanley, and her husband Neill Stanley, the channel operates entirely from their home in Hertfordshire.
Noel builds each day’s broadcast schedule by hand using paper cards in what Sarah describes as “more of an extension than a shed.”
They specialise in vintage British films, classic TV series, and documentaries from the 1930s through the 1980s.
Think black and white British cinema that mainstream channels abandoned decades ago. Early ITV dramas nobody’s seen in years. Forgotten B-movies from studios that don’t exist anymore.
The remarkable thing? People actually watch it. Weekly viewership hit around 6 million during the 2020 lockdowns. Current figures sit around 4 million viewers per month. Those are extraordinary numbers for a channel showing content most broadcasters gave up on years ago.
Until now, you could watch it on Freeview Channel 82, Sky 328, Virgin Media 445, Freesat 306, and YouView 82. And now – Freely joins the party.
What You Get On Freely
Talking Pictures TV on Freely delivers exactly what the platform promises – live streaming through your broadband.
The channel sits on Freely Channel 36, tucked midway through the entertainment section rather than near the end where it lives on traditional Freeview. You get the same 24-hour broadcast schedule of vintage British films and classic TV shows that airs everywhere else.
Picture quality depends on your broadband speed rather than aerial reception, which means consistent streaming regardless of weather or geography.
No more pixelated pictures when it rains. No more missing the channel entirely because you live somewhere with rubbish Freeview coverage.
Like every Freely channel, you can pause the live channel for up to 15 minutes if you need to step away mid-film.
However – there’s no catch-up or on-demand content integrated into Freely’s version of TPTV. You get the live stream and nothing else.
Miss a film? It’s gone unless it repeats later. Want to binge classic episodes of a series that aired last week? You’re out of luck. Freely only provides the live channel, with no connection to TPTV’s app-based on-demand library.
The TPTV Encore App Situation
TPTV Encore, the channel’s on-demand streaming app that launched late last year, remains completely separate from the live Freely channel.
The Encore app offers a library of classic British content from the vaults, but it doesn’t include everything that airs on the live channel. They’re two different services that don’t talk to each other.
However, if you’re watching Freely on certain devices, you can have both.
The brand new Netgem Pleio (see my review) – the standalone Freely box that launched today – runs full Android TV 14 with access to the Google Play Store.
That means you can install the TPTV Encore app directly on the device, giving you both the live Freely channel and the on-demand library on the same box.
The same applies if you’re using Freely on Amazon Fire TV sets, which also support the Encore app. You can flip between watching the live channel through Freely’s EPG and browsing the on-demand catalogue through the separate app.
It’s not integrated – you’re switching between different apps rather than having one unified TPTV experience – but at least both options exist on the same device if you want them.
What’s Still Coming In 2026
While TPTV has arrived early, the other channels announced back in October remain scheduled for 2026.
BLAZE – the Freeview Channel 64 home of Ancient Aliens, Pawn Stars, and Storage Wars – should arrive sometime next year.
Bloomberg TV+ will bring dedicated news programming. Gemporia continues the shopping channel tradition. Local TV variations will provide regional content for 11 different areas.
The five additional AMC channels (Evidence of Evil, Bloodline Detectives, Love After Lock Up, True Crime UK, and AMC Reality) will also launch in 2026, taking AMC’s Freely presence from three channels to eight.
However, we’re still waiting on other channels promised even earlier. Back in April, ITV announced “The Chase” and “Saturday Night Every Night” channels for Freely, plus 11 new channels from Channel 5.
Those were supposed to arrive “later this year” – seven months ago. They still haven’t materialised.
Channel 4 did finally deliver their three streaming-only channels (4Reality, 4Homes, and 4Life) in early October after months of delays.
Whether Freely eventually becomes the dominant UK TV platform remains to be seen. But for households where traditional Freeview has never worked properly, having TPTV available through streaming could be genuinely liberating.
And arriving months ahead of schedule? That’s just a pleasant surprise.
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