How to Get the Station Talking Again
I t's perfect lockdown viewing, a comforting loop of the by, broadcasting one-time films and vintage TV, 24 hours a twenty-four hour period. You might call the Talking Pictures cable aqueduct the anti-Netflix, with its roster of forgotten minor movies alongside cult series and documentaries, but the channel has seen viewing numbers boom during the pandemic, with audience figures of just over three.5 one thousand thousand a week. "And from the mail we get, and the telephone calls," says co-founder Sarah Cronin-Stanley, "nosotros're certain information technology's much more than."
There is nothing ostentatious or big-budget about Talking Pictures. It is run by a family in an ordinary house on an ordinary road in a village near Watford. Their headquarters is an extension in the garden, full of film canisters, DVDs and strings of give thanks-you cards from loyal fans. The team comprises Sarah Cronin-Stanley, a vintage TV and film fan and erstwhile actor; her husband, Neill, who produces the weekly newsletter and looks after Tv regulations compliance; and Sarah's dad Noel Cronin, a film distributor who began his career 6 decades ago in the Rank Organisation post-room. (Sarah and Neill's 10-year-quondam son lives in the firm besides. He loves Laurel and Hardy.)
With its 5th birthday coming up next month, Talking Pictures has been busy expanding its output, with cult classics including 60s drama Up the Junction, Nicholas Roeg's The Human being Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie, and the Richard Burton thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Coming up this week are Julie Christie and Alan Bates in The Go-Between, and the much-adored late 1970s TV series Quatermass, featuring John Mills. High-contour fans of the channel include Kenneth Branagh and Brian Blessed ("they watch a film at the same fourth dimension together, and so discuss it afterwards", Cronin-Stanley says). Vic Reeves and Jools Kingdom of the netherlands are regular viewers too so, manifestly, is the Queen, who is said to tune in for Laurel and Hardy. "Vic Reeves said we were like the comforting sense of taste of oxtail soup and beingness off school," Cronin-Stanley says.
I get in bear on with the Talking Pictures team in the early on days of lockdown. I fancy nosing effectually their offices, but, somewhat fittingly, they don't do Zoom. Instead, I telephone call their landline, which is accessible to the public on their website. "We get lots of calls from viewers, but it's squeamish," says Cronin-Stanley. "Often people are merely lonely and want a chat."
Noel Cronin joined the Rank Organisation in 1962, at 14, delivering post at their film-processing laboratories in Park Royal, west London: "I remember the exciting smell of the Guinness factory, the chimneys," he says. "That was an era when people were shy. Leaving schoolhouse and going into a huge office was daunting." He progressed to cutting rooms in Mayfair, before moving to the Primal Office of Information, where Chris Tarrant and Peter Greenaway were amidst his colleagues.
Having progressed to occasional executive producing and film distribution in the 1990s, he noticed old films disappearing from Goggle box schedules: "Black and white all of a sudden became a no-no on TV unless it was The Tertiary Human being, but I'd been in movie long enough to know the tide turns." He started ownership upward films, acquiring Scrooge and The Pickwick Papers and the Four-Star Playhouse catalogue, featuring David Niven.
I mention missing the days when you could take hold of old classics similar these popping up on mainstream TV. ""Don't get me on my discourse at present!" he laughs. "The BBC and ITV went for inexpensive programming instead. All that awful 'purchase a business firm, bake a cake, weed your window box' stuff. A film has always had more worth than that."
Today, the aqueduct plays films information technology owns forth with others under licence. Cronin plans the schedules himself, writing them out on weekly library cards. A current highlight is 1970s episodes of Sunday Nighttime at the London Palladium.
Talking Pictures' chief audition is largely elderly, he says, with many viewers housebound or in care homes, simply he's likewise been surprised by the younger viewers gravitating to the channel. A recent banking concern vacation special featuring cult children'southward films from the 70s including The Amazing Mr Blunden and Ring Of Brilliant Water got "brilliant figures", he says, attracting parents who were children dorsum then, and their kids and grandchildren.
Talking Pictures recently held a fascinating collaboration with the Imperial State of war Museum, showing former movies and public information films and it often screens shorts from public archives, besides as private films: 1 of a family holidaying in Brighton was recently shown mid-afternoon. Cronin loves films that prove off parts of British culture that have been forgotten. He mentions Hindle Wakes, a 1952 British drama fix in Blackpool and Llandudno, shown on the station last August, featuring packed beaches and dancehalls from that era. "You very rarely go to see those aspects of those times, and every bit for the individual films, it's the kind of stuff that many people accept thrown away. But when you go to see how your grandma and grandfather would have really experienced life, that'south great."
Nevertheless, the channel'due south resurrection of the by got them into trouble in 2018 for dissemination several films that included racist linguistic communication. Ofcom waded in. Today, any movie with offensive content is trailed appropriately. "We absolutely weren't endorsing that language, in the aforementioned way that nosotros don't endorse the attitudes to women and other groups [that] were very dissimilar dorsum then. Just I also think it'south important that we don't rewrite those films. It's important to learn from the mistakes of the past," says Cronin-Stanley. Talking Pictures regularly broadcasts films about race problems, queer politics and course. The coming fortnight's schedule includes working-class drama Jump and Port Wine, and John Injure in The Naked Ceremonious Servant, with some Powell and Pressburger and Hammer Horror movies to follow in June.
The business is run in a gloriously old-fashioned way. Its enthusiastic newsletters are launched every Tuesday, with a printable choice, and so viewers can read them away from screens. The channel tops upward revenue from adverts by releasing DVDs through its Renown Films banner, and selling merchandise such as Joan Collins and Diana Dors compact mirrors. Although the twelvemonth ahead looks tough, with the advertising market crashing, they are adamant to keep the station free of charge. Also, they'd never consider showing bigger films, "stuff like Where Eagles Dare", Cronin-Stanley says. "That'south not u.s.a.. We're more about the things people have forgotten, then realise how much they love."
Before lockdown, Talking Pictures fans would occasionally find their accost (they won't divulge it today) and make pilgrimages, expecting a much grander HQ. "They think they're going to observe a fancy movie theatre, or a store, or meet a projectionist," says Cronin-Stanley. Now they are getting many emails a solar day saying thank you for the service they're providing. "Some intermission my heart actually. Carers saying nosotros don't know what nosotros would do without you. Yous send the people we love to a time they think, to a time that they feel safe."
As for the station's forthcoming fifth birthday celebrations, "Me and dad might have a block, I suppose," says Cronin-Stanley. "Or a cup of tea and a cream bun."
Talking Pictures Television receiver is on Freeview aqueduct 81, Virgin 445, Freesat 306, and Heaven 328
Talking Pictures' 10 nearly pop screenings
1. Public Heart
Moody British drama serial starring Alfred Shush as lonely, fortysomething private investigator Frank Mark. Ran on ITV from 1965 to 1975.
2. Gideon's Manner
Fast-paced ITV crime series set in Scotland Chiliad and shot in mid-60s London. John Gregson plays overworked Cdr George Gideon.
3. The 30 Nine Steps
Robert Powell plays Richard Hannay in this 1978 version of John Buchan'southward thriller, with a host of well-known British actors in smaller parts.
4. Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge is played past Alastair Sim in this 1951 accommodation of Charles Dickens'southward A Christmas Carol, with back up from George Cole, Michael Hordern and Hermione Baddeley.
v. King Creole
Elvis Presley plays Danny Fisher in Michael Curtiz's hit 1958 movie about a rebellious nightclub vocalizer who attracts the attention of a local crime boss.
half-dozen. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
British amanuensis Alec Leamas, played by Richard Burton, refuses to come in from the common cold war in this atmospheric 1965 adaptation of John Le Carré's novel.
7. Concluding Holiday
When an unappreciated salesman finds he has weeks left to live he blows his savings on a final holiday at a smart resort. Alec Guinness stars, with a screenplay by JB Priestley.
viii. Hobson's Choice
Acclaimed British romantic comedy from 1954 directed by David Lean and starring Charles Laughton equally the tyrannical Victorian bootmaker, Henry Hobson.
9. Notorious
Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains star in Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-nominated 1946 espionage drama with a love triangle.
10. For the Love of Ada
ITV sitcom outset shown in 1970, featuring Irene Handl every bit a Cockney widow prone to malapropisms, who falls in love with the gravedigger who buried her husband (Wilfred Pickles).
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/17/inside-talking-pictures-the-ultimate-in-lockdown-comfort-tv
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