Talking about Talking Pictures TV
Andrew Roberts loves the classic films and telly series on Talking Pictures TV, the hit channel set up by a Hertfordshire family
Talking Pictures TV is Britain’s largest independent TV station, watched by two million viewers a week. It is a family concern, run by Sarah Cronin-stanley, her husband Neill and her father Noel Cronin, a producer and editor who joined Pinewood Studios in 1963.
In the late 1990s, they established Renown Pictures, which acquired the rights to old film titles, and their DVD releases quickly proved indispensable for any devotee of British cinema.
By 2007, Noel Cronin had the idea for an archive channel – but television networks thought it was unviable. The family decided to establish Talking Pictures TV themselves, and it went on air in May 2015 on Sky. Four years later, any Freeview set can receive TPTV. The family run the business out of their home in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire.
TPTV is, of course, not the only station to screen black-and-white pictures before prime time. Both the BBC and Channel 4 run vintage programmes – but not with the same dedication as TPTV.
One of TPTV’S strengths is that it screens pictures that are no longer shown on the mainstream channels.
In the 1980s, the Scotland Yard and Scales of Justice second features – with their ‘Anglo-amalgamated Presents’ fanfare – aired on Channel 4. Today, these low-budget thrillers are TPTV staples.
Why endure the ITV panel show Loose Women when you can thrill to the ever-lugubrious Edgar Lustgarten on TPTV, saying ‘It was here the villain made his fatal error’?
The station reruns many ITV programmes, allowing viewers to marvel at Peter Purves as a mobster’s sidekick in Gideon’s Way (1965-66).
One of TPTV’S many joys is the opportunity it affords to rediscover so many stars of British cinema, from Diana Dors to the soigné yet petulant Laurence Harvey. The character actors are equally indispensable: a beautiful cameo from
John Le Mesurier in Jigsaw (1962); or Peter Vaughan’s off-beat investigator in Smokescreen (1964).
The TPTV bill isn’t rose-tinted. Matthew Sweet, author of Shepperton Babylon, says, ‘In the last few months of addictive viewing, I have watched Callan episodes of uncompromising bleakness. I have seen Gideon of Scotland Yard [1958] deal with posh thugs and domestic tyrants. I have been taken aback by how TV drama of the Fifties and Sixties saw the middle-class marriage as a theatre of verbal and physical violence.’
To watch the 1960s B-films The Material Witness and Payment in Kind is to experience a realm of suburban despair, while Life at the Top (1965) is one of the most downbeat pictures of the decade. The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) features Anthony Newley as the self-loathing protagonist in a grey Soho, while Alfred Burke’s Frank Marker of Public Eye (1965-75) collates evidence of grubby secrets. The 1972 episode The Man Who Said Sorry concerns a suicidal visitor to the inquiry agent’s office, with Paul Rogers giving one of the finest performances in the history of British TV.
TPTV highlights include: the sublime Kind Hearts and Coronets (celebrating its 70th anniversary, showing on 21st July); Poor Cow (1967), Ken Loach’s early kitchen-sink dramatisation of Nell Dunn’s novel, on 26th July; and CarltonBrowne of the F.O. (1959), the Roy Boulting comedy with Peter Sellers and Terry-thomas combining on top form (on 3rd August).
As head of the Department of Miscellaneous Territories, TerryThomas’s Cadogan De Vere CarltonBrowne gleefully anticipates Monty Python’s Upper-class Twit of the Year by more than a decade. Carlton-browne is the hapless diplomat sent out to the obscure island of Gaillardia, which the British government has quite forgotten is one of their colonies. Up-and-coming Sellers plays Amphibulos, the wheelerdealer prime minister of Gaillardia, with his eye permanently on the main chance.
Not every offering from TPTV is such a gem. Harry H Corbett is quite mesmerisingly bad as a Maltese gangster in The Shakedown (1959), while Gonks Go Beat (1965) will change your view of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker for ever.
But to witness Rex Harrison in The Rake’s Progress (1945), Peter Finch in No Love for Johnnie (1961), Peter Sellers in Heavens Above! (1963), Trevor Howard in The Heart of The Matter (1953) or Barbara Windsor in Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963) is to experience some of the heights of British screen acting.
Talking Pictures offers a virtual BFI season every day, without the expense of travel to the South Bank. For the housebound, such a channel is a beacon of hope amid a morass of chat shows and poverty porn with the entertainment value of a disused bus shelter.
Film historian Dr Melanie Williams reaffirms that TPTV has proved, through achieving such high viewing figures, that there is an appetite and audience for old films. As she says, ‘Who needs Netflix when you’ve got episodes of Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre on tap?’