Classic Movie channel to be launched by Sony

Following the success of Talking Pictures TV and more recently Rok TV, Sony is to launch a classic movie channel.

“So, this New Year, tune in to this cinematic celebration that spans a variety of different genres and eras, and features some of the biggest stars to ever grace our screens.” – Sony Movie Classics

The latest UK Sony Television channel will be dedicated to ‘classic film’ when it launches early next year.

Celebrating quality cinema from the 1940s to the noughties, the  celebration of older celuloid will air iconic films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, landmark movies from every decade, key films of the British new-wave and modern masterpieces. The channel promises viewers masterpieces such as Gandhi, Kramer vs. Kramer, Oliver!, Easy Rider, Antony and Cleopatra, From Here to Eternity and other big screen classics.

Sony Movies Classic launches on the 7th January 2020 in the UK with screenings of Ladies of the Chorus, A Man for all Seasons, The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Jamaica Inn to name only a few.

With the best films, come the best stars, and Sony Movies Classic will have plenty on offer. See Humphrey Bogart, named by the AFI as American cinema’s Greatest Male Star, star alongside Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen. See Hepburn again in esteemed Southern Gothic mystery, Suddenly Last Summer; a title that also showcases the great Elizabeth Taylor. And Clint Eastwood will also be bringing some Hollywood heat to those cold January nights, in his ultimate psychological stalker outing, Play Misty For Me.

What would Hollywood be without its gallery of merry pranksters? Some of cinema’s finest talents made themselves in comedy, and Sony Movies Classic will be celebrating these comic titans with some of their best performances. From comic collectives like the Marx Brothers – in all-time great slapstick Duck Soup – to stand-alone legends like master-of-disguise Peter Sellers in The Mouse that Roared, and plucky man of the people George Formby, featuring in I Didn’t Do It.

The channel will also honour the long British tradition of social realist filmmaking that gave us unbridled access into the lives of “real folks”, their kitchen sinks and all. Sony Movies Classic sees legendary British actor Albert Finney star as a belligerent, boozing antihero in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Or be transported back to the grimy streets of ’60s Salford in Tony Richardson’s masterpiece, A Taste of Honey, and the tough world of reform schools in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

The Sony Movies Classic channel will be on Freeview channel 50, Freesat channel 303, Sky channel 319 and Virgin Media channel 424.