What’s on TCM tonight? Here is the full TCM schedule for Tuesday, October 27, 2026, with times in Eastern Time (ET).

TCM spends the day on Sam Wood, then hands primetime to Frank Capra

See also: What's on tonight across all channels | Wednesday's TV guide

Seven of tonight’s fourteen movies on TCM are directed by Sam Wood, and they run almost without a break from 8am to 8pm ET. That is the story of the schedule, and Arsenic and Old Lace at 8pm ET is the reward for sitting through it.

Start with the reward. Arsenic and Old Lace is a 1944 Frank Capra comedy thriller, 135 minutes, with Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre in the cast. It is the best two-plus hours of the night by some distance, and it faces Dancing with the Stars, NCIS and Moonshiners at the same moment, none of which will be this brisk. Five stars, and the pick.

Back up to the day. The Sam Wood run starts with The Man in Possession (1931) at 8am ET, then The Unguarded Hour (1936), Lord Jeff (1938) and Stablemates (1938), before Our Town (1940) at 2pm ET, Kings Row (1942) at 3:45pm ET and Command Decision (1948) at 6pm ET. Together they cover seventeen years, and they bounce between romantic comedy, crime, sport and war. Of those, Our Town and Kings Row are the two to circle. Our Town stars William Holden, Martha Scott and Fay Bainter. Kings Row, at 135 minutes, has Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan and Betty Field. Stablemates brings Wallace Beery and Mickey Rooney together, which is a decent reason to give it a go if you’re home at 12:30pm ET.

After Capra comes I Married a Witch at 10:15pm ET, a 1942 René Clair romantic comedy and fantasy with Veronica Lake and Fredric March. At 90 minutes it’s the kind of late slot that gets finished. It is worth staying up for, and it’s a better closer than most nights give you.

The overnight is Bette Davis territory by the end: A Stolen Life, a 1946 drama, arrives at 11:45pm ET. The early hours of the day, from 12:15am, belong to Midnight Lace with Doris Day and Rex Harrison, then Airport 1975, then Lonelyhearts with Montgomery Clift. They are fine, but they’re the part of the schedule to record rather than stay up for.

The sensible plan: dip into Our Town or Kings Row in the afternoon, settle in for Arsenic and Old Lace at 8pm ET, then decide how late you want to go.


Also on TV tonight at 8pm ET

  • ABC: Dancing with the Stars
  • NBC: NBA Basketball
  • CBS: NCIS
  • FOX: 2026 World Series
  • PBS: Finding Your Roots
  • The CW: WWE NXT
  • ION: Chicago Fire
  • AMC: A Nightmare on Elm Street (from 7pm ET)
  • FX: Independence Day (from 6pm ET)
  • Freeform: Addams Family Values (from 7pm ET)

Every channel tonight, side by side · Movies on TV this week · Tomorrow’s TV


Frequently asked questions

What’s on TCM tonight?

On Tuesday, October 27, 2026, TCM shows Arsenic and Old Lace at 8pm ET and I Married a Witch at 10:15pm ET.

Is there a movie on TCM tonight?

Yes: Command Decision (1948) at 6pm ET, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) at 8pm ET, I Married a Witch (1942) at 10:15pm ET and A Stolen Life (1946) at 11:45pm ET.

What’s on TCM late tonight?

After 11pm ET, TCM has A Stolen Life at 11:45pm ET.

What time does TCM’s evening start?

The evening schedule starts with Command Decision at 6pm ET.

A film channel with no regulars

TCM shows old films, one after another, around the clock, and almost never the same one twice. Across the two weeks we tracked, every hour of its schedule was a film or a short film program, and just 1% of airtime went to anything that came back on three or more days. No other channel we measure comes close to that. Where most channels are built from strands and repeats, TCM is built from one-offs.

The films are overwhelmingly from Hollywood’s studio era. A typical day runs to around 14 titles, most of them from the 1930s to the 1950s, with silent films, foreign classics and 1970s titles mixed in. They are not grouped at random. TCM programs in themes: a day for one star, a night for one director, an evening for one series of films.

What a day on TCM looks like

Because nothing repeats, the shape of TCM’s day comes from its themes rather than its titles. Across the two weeks we tracked, the daytime hours were usually given to a single star, director or year:

  • a full day of films from 1932, from Emma and The Wet Parade to The Mask of Fu Manchu;
  • a day of Laraine Day pictures, including Mr. Lucky with Cary Grant and The Locket with Robert Mitchum;
  • a Leslie Howard day running through Romeo and Juliet, The Petrified Forest and Pygmalion;
  • a Mervyn LeRoy day, from Little Caesar and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to Random Harvest;
  • days built around Myrna Loy and Constance Bennett, and a day of baseball films that ran from The Pride of the Yankees to The Jackie Robinson Story.

Primetime starts at 8pm ET and usually follows a theme of its own for the night: all six Thin Man films back to back from 8pm into the next morning, three Monty Python films in a row, a Hitchcock night with Blackmail and The 39 Steps running on to Dial M for Murder and North by Northwest.

Some slots recur. On Saturday mornings TCM shows a Godzilla double bill around 6am, a Dr. Gillespie film at 10am and a short block of classic cartoons around 11:30am. Late Sunday night, after midnight, is the home of silent and international cinema: The Unknown with Lon Chaney, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath and Ordet, Three Colors: Red. MGM Parade Show, a short 1950s program, fills odd gaps between features.

In the run-up to Halloween, horror takes a bigger share. The October schedule includes a day of Tod Browning films ending with Freaks, overnight runs of Dracula and Frankenstein films with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and late-night slots for The Invisible Man and Kwaidan. That is a seasonal turn, not the channel’s year-round character.

Popular films on TCM

TCM has no shows in the usual sense, so these are the kinds of film it builds its schedule around.

The Thin Man (1934) is a comedy mystery directed by W. S. Van Dyke, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, and TCM runs it with its five sequels, from After the Thin Man (1936) to Song of the Thin Man (1947).

Rear Window (1954) and North by Northwest (1959) are Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, with James Stewart and Grace Kelly in the first and Eva Marie Saint and James Mason in the second. Hitchcock is a constant presence, with Foreign Correspondent, The Trouble with Harry and Stage Fright also scheduled across the fortnight.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is William Wyler’s war drama with Myrna Loy and Fredric March, the kind of long prestige picture TCM gives a whole 8pm slot to.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952), directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds, represents the musicals that appear across the schedule.

Godzilla (1954), directed by Ishiro Honda, and its sequels are a Saturday-morning habit.

How to watch TCM

TCM is a cable channel, so it is not available with an antenna. The Watch TCM app and tcm.com stream the channel live and on demand, but you need to sign in with a TV provider.

Live TV streaming services that carry TCM include YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV and DirecTV Stream. HBO Max has a TCM hub with a rotating selection of its films on demand, though not the live channel.

Channels like TCM

  • Sundance TV mixes in older films too, including Abbott and Costello comedies from the 1950s.
  • AMC is the other big movie channel, though its films are newer, more repeated and, in October, mostly horror.
  • IFC runs films all day as well, and in October leans hard on horror.
  • Hallmark Mystery suits viewers who like their crime old-fashioned, with classic TV detectives.
  • Paramount Network is the choice for modern studio films shown many times over.

For films on every channel, see our movies on TV guide.

Who it’s for

TCM is for anyone who wants classic cinema and is happy to let a programmer choose it. Because almost nothing repeats within a fortnight, it rewards checking the schedule rather than waiting for a favorite to come round. If you want recent films or TV series, this is not the channel.

Does TCM show the same movies over and over?

Very rarely. Across the two weeks we tracked, only a handful of films aired twice, and none aired more than twice.

Can I watch TCM without cable?

Yes, through a live TV streaming service such as YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV or DirecTV Stream. It is not available over the air with an antenna.

What kind of movies does TCM show?

Mostly Hollywood films from the 1930s to the 1950s, with silent films, foreign classics and some 1960s and 1970s titles, programmed in themes by star, director or genre.

What time does primetime start on TCM?

TCM’s evening features usually start at 8pm ET, with a theme running through the night.