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. Thursday’s primetime runs three separate Police Interceptors cases, jumping from series 16 to series 20 partway through, at 6pm, 7pm and 9pm, with Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders breaking up the run at 8pm. Timber Titans brings a new episode to 10pm, and The X-Files closes out the night from 11pm.

5Action Schedule: Thursday 20 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5Action schedule for Thursday 20 August 2026, on Freeview 33.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on 5Action today

Thursday’s overnight run opens with World’s Deadliest Weather: Caught on Camera at midnight, series six, following the tornadoes Hurricane Milton tore across Florida and a sailor struck by lightning off the coast of Panama. Outback Truckers follows at 1am, with Mark under pressure over a job worth $2 million and Belinda dealing with a loose herd of cattle. Trucking Heavy takes the next two hours: a 50-tonne engine gets threaded out of a tight yard and a hot tub is lifted over a house at 2am, then a 6-tonne mobile lodge is hauled across Scotland to Loch Linnhe at 3am while the haulage firm Allelys returns a 3-tonne bronze statue to Birmingham. A short Entertainment News on 5 bulletin at 3:50am hands over to two hours of teleshopping, and Cruise TV with LoveitBookit then takes both the 7am and 8am breakfast slots, the second a new edition.

Trucking Hell splits the 9am hour, covering a lorry fire at rush hour, a 44-tonne artic stuck in mud off a country lane and a smashed electric car blocking a busy road. Police Interceptors gets an earlier outing at 10:05am, series two, chasing car thieves through the Essex suburbs, breaking up a nightclub fight and tackling boy racers around Southend. Gunsmoke’s thirteenth series arrives at 11:05am, with Bob Johnson tempted to settle a score with his gun rather than the law.

Early afternoon turns to westerns: The Hired Hand (1971) runs either side of the 1:10pm news update, three drifters whose plans to reach California collapse in a shoot-out in a New Mexico village, and Branded (1951, Alan Ladd and Mona Freeman) does the same around the 3pm bulletin, following a gunman who poses as the missing heir to a rancher’s fortune. Highway Thru Hell takes 4pm, with Jamie facing layoffs after a mail truck goes off a cliff, and Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders returns at 5pm with a multi-vehicle collision in Warrington and a stolen-vehicle pursuit on the M6, setting up the run of Police Interceptors that opens tonight’s primetime at 6pm.

5Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5Action primetime line-up for tonight, Thursday 20 August 2026.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 6pm

5Action opens the night with the first of three Police Interceptors cases, this pair drawn from series 16. A dog handler backs up the armed response unit after reports of a man waving a gun at a pizza delivery driver, while colleagues on the same shift deal with a drink-driver caught at a drive-thru.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 7pm

The same series continues straight away with a second case: the Operational Support Unit carries out a raid on a house over suspected drug dealing.

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

Nicky Campbell’s motorway strand breaks up the run at 8pm with series four. Officers stop a van carrying counterfeit goods, and a tractor is pressed into service to chase down a suspect after a crash leaves a passenger trapped in a car.

Police Interceptors — 5Action, 9pm

Police Interceptors returns for a third time tonight, but jumps forward to series 20. On a stormy night, officers close in on a stolen Astra whose driver dodges the stinger twice before finally being caught.

Timber Titans — 5Action, 10pm

A new episode arrives at 10pm titled How Many Truck Drivers Does It Take to Fix a Logging Truck (series 1, episode 7). Structural trouble with a bridge pushes the Freya crew over to a different part of the logging block, where the replacement access road isn’t finished either.

The X-Files — 5Action, 11pm

Primetime closes with a genuine change of pace. Triangle, the third episode of series six, sends Mulder through the Bermuda Triangle and onto a 1939 ocean liner overrun by Nazi soldiers, one of the show’s more theatrical stand-alone episodes.

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?

Police Interceptors opens with two episodes at 6pm and 7pm from series 16, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders takes 8pm, and a third Police Interceptors case follows at 9pm, this one from series 20. Timber Titans brings a new episode at 10pm, and The X-Files closes out the night from 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

Thursday sticks close to the channel’s house formula: Police Interceptors takes three separate slots across the evening (6pm, 7pm and 9pm), jumping from series 16 to series 20 for that last case, with Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders breaking up the run at 8pm. Timber Titans then takes the 10pm slot with a new episode, its Pacific Northwest logging crews standing in for the usual British dashcams and pursuit cars. None of it is essential, but it does what 5Action always does, competently and without surprises.

The X-Files at 11pm remains the one break from the roads-and-pursuits template. Series six’s third case, Triangle, is a genuine curiosity too, stranding Mulder on a 1939 liner in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle for the whole hour. Worth staying up for if the rest of the evening hasn’t held your attention.

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