TALKING PICTURES TELEVISION – A CELEBRATION

This week marks the sixth anniversary of a television channel that is a source of delight to classic machinery and cinema fans alike. After all, who needs the likes of Celebrity Supermarket Warehouse Shift Worker and Help – Even My Agent Has Forgotten My Name? Instead, you could be watching Genevieve, Commander Gideon in his Wolseley of Justice and The Champions fighting crime, its back-projection or the ‘White ITC Jaguar of Doom’.

The station I refer to, of course, is Talking Pictures TV - a channel that richly deserves its remarkable success. Run by Sarah Cronin-Stanley, her husband Neill and father Noel, it first aired in 2015 on Sky. The family had the idea for an archive station as long ago as 2007, only for their plans to be dismissed as unviable. Fourteen years later, TPTV attracts some 3.5 million viewers per week.

One of the reasons for the family’s success is the varied bill of fare. Enthusiasts of the ‘Great British B-Movie’ can enjoy Smokescreen, featuring a Vauxhall Victor FB Estate and a career-best performance from Peter Vaughan. Or you could enjoy Scotland Yard starring the faintly sinister Edgar Lustgarten alongside yet more Wolseleys. For those who prefer films of a higher budget, there’s The Man Who Haunted Himself with its Lamborghini Islero S, Rover P5B 3.5-Litre saloon and Roger Moore at his finest. And that’s before we even get to the television gems, from Special Branch to Callan and The Public Eye.

Of course, not every TPTV film or programme is a lost masterpiece. In Konga, the best performances are given by an Austin LD and Michael Gough’s wig. With The Shakedown, half the cast are outacted by a Ford Consul Mk 2 while Harry H Corbett’s attempt at a Maltese accent has to be heard to be believed. Similarly, whoever cast Michael Caine as an Irish gangster in Edgar Wallace: Solo for Sparrow had a very warped sense of humour.

However, no TPTV schedule is without interest for the motor enthusiast, and perhaps the most fascinating broadcasts are the documentaries. This really is a lost world – smog, woodbines, coffee bars, Austin K8 ‘Three-Way’ delivery vans and cobbled streets traversed by freight railway lines. The station has recently started to air Rank’s Look at Life series of travelogues made between 1959 and 1969 – and each edition is utterly priceless. One might feature a ‘Polizei’ Porsche 356s, maintaining law and order on the autobahns while another film focuses on an almost unrecognisable Covent Garden filled with Commers and Morris-Commercials.

If this writer had to pick a favourite Look at Life, it would be 1959’s Market Place with guest commentator Sidney James in full Hancock’s Half Hour guise. It also has traffic ranging from Renault 4CVs to the Audax series Hillman Minx. But then TPTV has something for almost fine car devotees – plus the opportunity to see a young Peter Purves as a gangster’s sidekick.