A visit to the HQ of the most remarkable channel in Britain raises questions about the future of TV, says Mark Smith

It looks like an ordinary room in an ordinary house because it is an ordinary room in an ordinary house but I’m fan-boying anyway because this is the place where they make one of the best little shows on British television. I sit in one of the comfy red chairs next to the host and presenter Noel Cronin and we talk about how his extraordinary TV channel happened, and why it’s worked, and where we go from here.

In case you haven’t seen Talking Pictures TV, some history: it was started 10 years ago when Noel had the idea to sell some of the classic movies and shows he’d acquired during his long career in TV and film, editing, producing and distributing. The problem was the channels he approached weren’t interested; they told him no one wants to watch black and white. But Noel was convinced they were wrong – “a good black and white film is good,” he says, “and a bad colour film is bad”– and decided the only way to do it was to do it himself.

And so, with his daughter Sarah, that’s what he did: he established his own TV channel, Talking Pictures TV, and for a decade now it’s been showing vintage movies and TV shows such as Z Cars, Van der Valk and Maigret. And in a pleasing riposte to the people at the other channels who said viewers wouldn’t watch, it’s proved to be a remarkable success, becoming the biggest independent channel in the UK with around 4-5 million viewers a month. Even Noel was taken aback. “I was surprised at the speed it took off,” he says.

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The whole thing is coordinated from here: Noel’s home in........

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