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

Published: 2 September 2026

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 3 September 2026 is not a typical night here. After a daytime split between two westerns and the usual cop-show mix, the channel clears its whole primetime for live sport: four and a quarter hours of the Snooker British Open, running from 6:45pm to 11pm as day four of the tournament plays out at the Centaur in Cheltenham, picked up once Channel 5’s own afternoon session has finished. Motorway Cops and a Best of World’s Strongest Man highlights clip fill the hour beforehand, and The X-Files closes out the night once the table falls quiet.

5Action Schedule: Thursday 3 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5Action schedule for Thursday 3 September 2026, on Freeview 33.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Late night

What’s on 5Action today

Thursday’s overnight hours run on the usual factual mix: Behind Bars: World’s Toughest Prisons at midnight, Outback Truckers at 1am and two back-to-back Trucking Hell episodes from 2am, before three hours of teleshopping take over from 4am. Cruise TV with LoveitBookit fills both breakfast slots, 7am and 8am, the second one a new episode.

Cops and Trucking Hell carry the mid-morning, and Gunsmoke takes the 11:30am slot before the channel splits its early afternoon between two westerns: Stranger at My Door from 12:30pm and The Lonely Man from 2:20pm, each broken by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin rather than shown straight through. Highway Thru Hell picks things back up at 4:05pm, followed by Trucking Hell and Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders, and then a Best of World’s Strongest Man highlights clip opens the evening proper at 6:25pm.

5Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5Action primetime line-up for tonight, Thursday 3 September 2026.

The Best of World’s Strongest Man — 5Action, 6:25pm

A twenty-minute highlights package from the strongman competition takes the 6:25pm slot — not live, just a warm-up ahead of the snooker.

Live: Snooker British Open — 5Action, 6:45pm

5Action clears the rest of its evening for day four of the British Open, picking up live from the Centaur in Cheltenham the moment Channel 5’s afternoon session ends. Katie Shanahan presents alongside Stephen Hendry, Ken Doherty and Joe Perry as defending champion Shaun Murphy continues his campaign. It runs four and a quarter hours, through to 11pm, and it’s effectively the whole of tonight’s primetime — tomorrow’s Channel 5 afternoon session moves on to the quarter-finals, so this is the last of the earlier rounds.

The X-Files — 5Action, 11pm

The 11pm hour belongs to The X-Files (series 6, episode 13).

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?

Live sport, for once: four and a quarter hours of the Snooker British Open, day four, from 6:45pm to 11pm, taken over from Channel 5 once its afternoon session ends. A short Best of World’s Strongest Man clip comes first at 6:25pm, 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

Thursday is 5Action at its most single-minded. Instead of the cop-show and recovery-truck rotation that normally fills the evening, the channel hands over the whole of primetime — four and a quarter hours of it — to live snooker, picking up day four of the British Open from Channel 5 at 6:45pm as it plays out at the Centaur in Cheltenham. Shaun Murphy defends his title in a field including the world’s best, and there is nothing else on the schedule that competes with it for space.

A brief Best of World’s Strongest Man clip gets the evening started at 6:25pm, and The X-Files closes the night once the final frame is played, but neither is more than a footnote either side of the main event. Anyone after the regular dashcam-and-recovery-truck mix should try again once the tournament moves on — tonight, the snooker is the whole reason to tune in.

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