5Action TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On 5Action Tonight

Updated: 14 July 2026

5Action is Channel 5’s dedicated home for cop shows, action films and factual entertainment, sitting on Freeview channel 33. It’s been through more names than most channels manage in a decade: launched as Spike in 2015, folded into Channel 5 as 5Spike in 2017, merged with the UK version of Paramount Network in 2020, and rebranded 5Action in January 2022. Tonight, Tuesday 14 July 2026, the channel sticks to its usual territory: three separate Police Interceptors instalments bookend Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders across the 6pm to 9pm run, Police Code Zero: Officer Under Attack takes the 10pm hour, and The X-Files closes out the night at 11pm. Channel numbers across every platform are in the table further down.

5Action Schedule: Tuesday 14 July 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5Action schedule for Tuesday 14 July 2026, on Freeview 33.

What’s on 5Action today

Today’s daytime schedule opens with the usual run of shopping strands, Cruise & Stay; Real Cruise People, JML Presents and Cruise TV with LoveitBookit, filling 7am to 9am before the factual programming takes over. Trucking Hell airs at 9am, Police Interceptors takes its regular mid-morning slot at 10am, and Gunsmoke follows at 11am for the day’s dose of western. The early afternoon belongs to Pillars of the Sky, split either side of the 1:05pm news bulletin, and The Last Challenge does the same around the 3:05pm bulletin, before The Motorway at 4pm and Motorway Cops: Catching at 5pm hand over to tonight’s primetime line-up from 6pm.

5Action Tonight — Primetime and the Evening Schedule

Here’s the 5Action primetime line-up for tonight, Tuesday 14 July 2026.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 6pm

The channel’s signature strand opens the evening with series 11, episode 9: real dashcam and bodycam footage of officers responding to calls, narrated over the top rather than explained by the officers themselves.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 7pm

A second helping follows straight on, series 11, episode 10, drawn from the same run as the 6pm instalment. Anyone tuning in for the first time won’t have missed much by skipping the earlier hour.

Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders — 5Action, 8pm

Nicky Campbell’s motorway series takes the 8pm hour for series 8, episode 8, trading urban chases for high-speed enforcement work on Britain’s fastest roads.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 9pm

A third Police Interceptors closes the cop-show run at 9pm, this time from series 19, episode 7, a considerably more recent series than the two episodes shown earlier in the evening.

Police Code Zero: Officer Under Attack — 5Action, 10pm

Series 3 continues with episode 3, the one hour tonight that isn’t built from the Police Interceptors mould. The format centres on the “Code Zero” call-sign officers use when they need urgent back-up, built from bodycam footage of confrontations that turn violent fast. It’s a harder watch than the pursuits either side of it, and the pick of the evening for anyone after something with more edge.

The X-Files — 5Action, 11pm

A fourth-series rerun closes the night, series 4, episode 20, the channel’s regular late slot for scripted drama once the factual and cop-show programming has wrapped up.

What kind of shows are on 5Action

Cop shows and roads policing documentaries

This is the backbone of the channel. Police Interceptors, Traffic Cops and Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders between them fill a huge share of the daily grid, often repeated two or three times in a single evening. They’re all built the same way: real dashcam and bodycam footage, a narrator explaining the stakes, and officers walking through what tipped them off. If you like one, you like all three.

Action films and westerns

Daytime slots lean on older genre cinema, particularly westerns. Gunsmoke, The Walking Hills and Horizons West all rotate through the afternoon grid regularly, usually split either side of the hourly news bulletin. Evenings occasionally carry a full western film too, though most nights the schedule reverts to the channel’s usual run of cop shows and factual documentaries once primetime begins.

Heavy recovery and trucking documentaries

Highway Thru Hell, Trucking Hell and Outback Truckers form a smaller but distinctive strand of real footage of heavy vehicle breakdowns and recoveries. British roadsides, the Australian outback and the Canadian mountains all get covered between them. Highway Thru Hell is the pick of the three by a distance, and 5Action tends to save it for one of the better evening slots on the nights it’s in the schedule.

How to watch 5Action

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find 5Action across the main UK television platforms:

5Action is free on all of the above platforms, with no subscription required. Virgin Media and Freesat numbers can vary slightly by region and box, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t match.

Streaming online

5Action streams live and free through 5, Channel 5’s combined broadcast and streaming platform, at channel5.com and via the 5 app on smart TVs, iOS, Android and Amazon Fire TV. The service was known as My5 until Channel 5 merged its linear channels and catch-up library into the single “5” brand in March 2025. A free account is all you need, and recent episodes of shows like Police Interceptors and Highway Thru Hell are generally available to catch up on afterwards.

5Action sister channels

5Action shares its ownership with three other channels under Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, itself part of Paramount Skydance Corporation.

5USA carries American crime dramas and imported US series. It’s closer to conventional scripted television than 5Action’s factual, cop-show-heavy grid.

5Star is built around reality television and true crime, more drama and personality-led than 5Action’s dashcam-and-recovery-truck diet.

Channel 5 itself is the flagship: the group’s biggest dramas, documentaries, entertainment shows and 5 News all sit here, with 5Action, 5USA and 5Star effectively acting as its more specialised, lower-key siblings.

All four channels are free-to-air, carry advertising rather than a subscription, and share programming and promotion across the group, so a face that turns up narrating something on 5Action tonight is quite likely to show up presenting something on Channel 5 next week.

Frequently asked questions

What channel is 5Action on?

Freeview 33, Sky 150 (Sky Q) or 165 (Sky Glass and Sky Stream), Virgin Media 150 in HD or 187 in SD, and Freesat 132. It’s free on all of them.

What’s on 5Action tonight?

Tonight, three episodes of Police Interceptors run across 6pm, 7pm and 9pm, with Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders taking the 8pm slot in between. Police Code Zero: Officer Under Attack takes over at 10pm, and The X-Files closes out the night at 11pm.

Is 5Action free to watch?

Yes, completely free to air with no subscription, though it carries advertising and teleshopping strands throughout the schedule, particularly during the day.

Can I watch 5Action online for free?

Yes. It streams live at channel5.com and through the 5 app, the platform formerly known as My5. A free account is all that’s required.

Verdict

5Action sticks to its usual formula tonight: cop shows bookending a motorway-patrol documentary, before Police Code Zero: Officer Under Attack breaks the pattern once the evening bulletins are out of the way. The three Police Interceptors episodes across 6pm, 7pm and 9pm are the channel doing what it does best, even if running the same show three times in one evening will test anyone’s patience by the third go.

Police Code Zero: Officer Under Attack at 10pm is the pick of the night, mostly because it’s the one hour that doesn’t repeat the format either side of it. A rerun of The X-Files rounds things off for anyone still up past 11. A standard night for the channel, without a fresh premiere to lift it above routine.

Related: Channel 5 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide