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. Wednesday 5 August 2026 runs the channel’s regular teatime cop-show block as usual, then closes the night with Police: Night Shift 999 at 10pm and a well-regarded X-Files rerun at 11pm.

5Action Schedule: Wednesday 5 August 2026 (Full Listings)

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

What’s on 5Action today

Wednesday opens with Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoners at midnight, profiling Mark Hobson, the Yorkshire spree killer who murdered twin sisters and an elderly couple in their own home (series 1, episode 4). Outback Truckers follows at 1am, with Turbo racing to stay on schedule for a marathon trek home while Euan hitches a ride with a volatile load in Tasmania (series 2, episode 12). Trucking Heavy takes the next two hours: a 50-tonne excavator has to be collected from a Welsh farm despite road closures at 2am, then Nick and Oscar haul a life-size metal stegosaurus 25 miles to RHS Garden Wisley at 3am (series 3, episodes 4 and 5). Entertainment News on 5 closes the small hours at 3:50am.

Teleshopping fills the run to 7am, when Cruise TV with LoveitBookit takes over; the 8am edition is new. Winter Road Rescue follows the 9am bulletin at 9:05am (series 5, episode 25), then Police Interceptors opens its own day at 9:40am with a driver carrying a suspect package trying to outrun officers before the team tracks down a gang of robbers’ hideout (series 1, episode 6). Gunsmoke takes 10:40am, Kitty caught up in a scheme to use Dal Neely’s daughter as bait to catch her father (series 12, episode 23).

The Night of the Grizzly, Clint Walker’s 1966 western about a retired lawman whose inherited Wyoming ranch draws a greedy neighbour, a vengeful bounty hunter and a marauding grizzly, runs from 11:45am, breaks for the 12:45pm news and resumes at 12:50pm through to 1:50pm. The Jayhawkers!, a 1959 western starring Jeff Chandler and Fess Parker as rivals fighting over control of Kansas territory, follows the same pattern either side of the 2:55pm bulletin, running until 4pm.

The Motorway takes 4pm, with a 44-tonne freight lorry capsizing on the M6 among the day’s incidents (series 4, episode 8), and Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders follows at 5pm on the A6 (series 2, episode 9), setting up the evening’s cop-show run.

5Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5Action primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 5 August 2026.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 6pm

Rookie officer Rachael gets a baptism of fire tonight, taking part in a chase that has a pregnant passenger in the mix. Later in the same episode, a motorist rings the police to complain about interceptor Chris (series 14, episode 5).

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 7pm

Liam and the team stop a 14-year-old boy and find him carrying crack cocaine, cash and a knife, one of the grimmer stops in this run (series 14, episode 6).

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

PCs Matt Turner and Ian Cosgrove are called to a collision in Middlewich where an 11-year-old child has been hit by a van, the kind of job that reminds you what the motorway patrols are really for (series 3, episode 4).

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 9pm

A smoking Audi A3 refuses to stop and its driver starts throwing cans of oil at pursuing officers, doing a passable impression of a video game. Elsewhere in the episode, a suspected drink driver gatecrashes a holiday park (series 25, episode 14).

Police: Night Shift 999 — 5Action, 10pm

A car linked to organised crime gets tracked down and stopped, officers step into a family dispute, and a hooded man is reported behaving threateningly towards young women (series 3, episode 7).

The X-Files — 5Action, 11pm

The pick of the night. Mulder and Scully give conflicting accounts of the same case, a small-town death that both of them insist involves a vampire, and the episode plays each version for laughs without losing the show’s usual unease. It’s one of the more fondly remembered instalments from this run (series 5, episode 12).

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 channel’s usual cop-show rotation. Police Interceptors takes 6pm, 7pm and 9pm, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders fills the 8pm hour, Police: Night Shift 999 arrives at 10pm, and The X-Files closes the night at 11pm. 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

Wednesday’s pick is Bad Blood at 11pm, the X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully tell two very different versions of the same vampire case. It’s one of the show’s better-loved episodes and stands out from the routine that surrounds it.

Everything before it is the standard cop-show block: three Police Interceptors episodes spread across the evening, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders at 8pm dealing with a child hit by a van in Middlewich, and Police: Night Shift 999 at 10pm following officers through an organised-crime pursuit and a family dispute.

Related: Channel 5 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide