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

5Action is Channel 5’s cop-show and action channel, and it has had more names than most channels manage in a decade: Spike at launch in 2015, 5Spike from 2017, merged with the UK’s Paramount Network in 2020, and 5Action since January 2022. Saturday 29 August 2026 breaks from the usual pattern: after a daytime built on Police Interceptors and Highway Thru Hell, the whole evening from 5:05pm is given over to film, with three titles run back to back, each split by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin rather than shown straight through. Robber’s Roost opens at 5:05pm, The Scalphunters follows at 6:55pm, The Rock takes the 9pm slot, and a classic X-Files rerun closes the night at 11:45pm.

5Action Schedule: Saturday 29 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5Action schedule for Saturday 29 August 2026, on Freeview 33.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on 5Action today

Saturday’s overnight hours open with Behind Bars: World’s Toughest Prisons at midnight (series 3, episode 3), then Outback Truckers at 1am and two episodes of Trucking Hell back to back from 2am, before a brief Entertainment News on 5 bulletin at 3:55am and three hours of teleshopping close out the night from 4am. Cruise TV with LoveitBookit takes both breakfast slots, 7am and 8am, the second one flagged as a new episode.

Police Interceptors owns the middle of the day, running five episodes from 9am to 1pm: it opens with a series 20 instalment before moving into series 21, whose own run skips from episode 2 to episode 4 in the feed’s numbering. Highway Thru Hell then takes three slots from 2pm to 5:05pm, though not in order — episode 3 first, then episode 1, then episode 11 — before the evening’s run of films begins.

5Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5Action primetime line-up for tonight, Saturday 29 August 2026 — an evening built entirely from three films, each broken partway through by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin rather than shown straight through.

Robber’s Roost — 5Action, 5:05pm

5Action’s Saturday night opens with Robber’s Roost, a 1955 western starring George Montgomery as a drifter caught between two rival gangs while he hunts for his wife’s killer. It plays for an hour, breaks for the news at 6:05pm, then picks back up at 6:10pm for its closing 45 minutes.

The Scalphunters — 5Action, 6:55pm

The Scalphunters takes over at 6:55pm, a 1968 comedy-western in which Burt Lancaster’s fur trapper trades pelts for an educated escaped slave played by Ossie Davis, only for a band of raiders to upend the deal. (The listings feed itself misspells Lancaster’s first name — worth knowing if you spot it elsewhere.) A news break at 7:55pm splits the film, which resumes at 8pm and runs through to 9pm.

The Rock — 5Action, 9pm

Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage headline The Rock at 9pm, Michael Bay’s 1996 thriller in which a chemical weapons expert and a former SAS prisoner break into Alcatraz to stop a rogue general. The same pattern repeats: a five-minute break at 10pm for Entertainment News on 5, then the film’s remaining hour and forty minutes from 10:05pm.

The X-Files — 5Action, 11:45pm

The night closes with a rerun of The X-Files, series 6 episode 5, the second half of the story in which Mulder is left swapping identities with a shadowy Area 51 operative. Fifty-five minutes of scripted drama to end an evening otherwise built entirely around cinema.

What kind of shows are on 5Action

Cop shows and roads policing documentaries

This is the channel, really. Police Interceptors, Traffic Cops and Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders between them account for most of the grid, and they are built to an identical template: dashcam and body-cam footage, a narrator over the top, and the officer explaining afterwards what made them look twice. John Thomson narrates one, Jamie Theakston another, Nicky Campbell the third, and that voice is often the quickest way to work out which show you have actually landed on.

Action films and westerns

Older genre cinema fills the afternoons, mostly westerns. Gunsmoke, The Walking Hills and Horizons West come round often, usually split either side of a news bulletin. A full western occasionally makes it into an evening slot, but not often.

Heavy recovery and trucking documentaries

Highway Thru Hell, Trucking Hell and Outback Truckers cover the same job on three continents: British roadsides, the Australian outback, the Canadian mountain passes. Highway Thru Hell is the best of them and 5Action seems to know it, since it tends to get a decent evening slot rather than being buried overnight.

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 sits under Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, itself part of Paramount Skydance Corporation, alongside three siblings. 5USA runs American crime dramas and imported US series, so it is far more scripted than anything here. 5Star does reality and true crime, personality-led where 5Action is all dashcam and recovery trucks. Channel 5 is the flagship and takes the group’s biggest dramas, documentaries and 5 News; the other three pick up the specialisms it does not have room for.

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.

What’s on 5Action tonight?

The evening is unusually film-heavy for this channel: the western Robber’s Roost from 5:05pm, the comedy-western The Scalphunters from 6:55pm, and Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage in The Rock from 9pm, each interrupted partway through by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin rather than shown straight through. The X-Files, a rerun of series 6, closes the night at 11:45pm. Full times are in the schedule table above.

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

Saturday is a genuine change of pace for 5Action. Instead of the cop-show and recovery-truck rotation that fills most evenings here, the whole of primetime from 5:05pm is given over to film: two westerns and a heist thriller, run back to back and each broken up by its own five-minute news bulletin rather than shown in one go. It is not the smoothest way to schedule three films, but Robber’s Roost, The Scalphunters and The Rock make for a stronger run than the channel’s usual daytime output.

The X-Files closes the night at 11:45pm, proof that scripted drama still has a place here even on a night built almost entirely around cinema. Anyone after the usual dashcam-and-recovery-truck mix should try again tomorrow — tonight is the exception, not the rule.

Related: Channel 5 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Films on TV This Week