That’s TV launches second offering with classic telly content

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A brand-new Freeview TV channel launches tomorrow (Wednesday 3 January 2024) celebrating 35 years since Home and Away first launched in the UK. That’s TV 2 will be the brand-new sister channel to That’s TV and promises to bring a raft of classic TV shows to Freeview viewers including the very first season of Home and Away.

The seaside soap originally launched on ITV in 1989, one year after it started in Australia, and focused on the Fletcher family – Tom (Roger Oakley) and Pippa (Vanessa Downing) and their six foster children. Home and Away ran on ITV1 for 11 years before it was announced that Channel 5 had acquired the rights to broadcast it in 2000.

Now to mark 35 years of Home and Away, That’s TV 2 is providing the opportunity for Freeview viewers to relive the first episodes of the soap not seen on terrestrial TV since it all started. Other iconic series’ making a comeback for the That’s TV 2 channel launch this week include Humans, the BAFTA-award winning thriller about synthetic robots or “synths” which is Channel 4’s top-rating drama of the past 30 years.

Other classic shows scheduled for That’s TV 2’s launch week include Baywatch starring David Hasselhoff and cult Australian drama about a women’s prison Prisoner: Cell Block H, the forerunner to the modern Wentworth franchise.

Head of Programming for That’s TV and That’s TV 2, Kris Vaiksalu:

“Over the past year That’s TV has reached new heights and we now have a schedule bursting with iconic TV shows from Benidorm to Shameless. There are so many more iconic TV shows we would love to show but we had simply run out of hours to fit them in. So I asked myself, what would Einstein do?

“It’s been a lot of work but we’re hugely excited and privileged to be launching That’s TV 2 as our second archive TV channel. Our aim is to make it a complete nostalgia-fest with such iconic shows from the beginning as Home and Away, Humans, Prisoner Cell Block H and Baywatch. That’s TV 2 does what it says on the tin – it’s a second helping of iconic TV from the That’s TV team.”

That’s TV 2 will broadcast free-to-air across the UK from Wednesday 3 January 2024 on Freeview channel 65, Sky channel 188 and Freesat channel 181. That’s TV will continue to broadcast across the UK on all major broadcast platforms with its current schedule which includes iconic TV shows such as Goodnight Sweetheart, Birds of a Feather, Benidorm, and Shameless.

Originally launched in 2014, That’s TV is available on all major broadcast TV platforms in the UK. Local variants of That’s TV are also available in 20 locations on Freeview channel 7 or 8, delivering local news and information. That’s TV’s parent company, That’s Media Group, also broadcasts three dedicated music channels on the Sky satellite platform.