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

Published: 3 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. Friday 4 September 2026 keeps the daytime westerns but sends the snooker elsewhere. Mackenna’s Gold and Bite the Bullet split the early afternoon, each broken by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin, and the evening runs a cycling highlights package rather than a live studio event: a stage-13 round-up of the Vuelta a España opens primetime at 7pm, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders follows at 8pm, and Red Dawn — Patrick Swayze’s 1984 Cold War thriller, itself broken by a short news bulletin — closes out the evening before The X-Files takes the graveyard slot. The Snooker British Open quarter-finals are on Channel 5 tonight, not here.

5Action Schedule: Friday 4 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5Action schedule for Friday 4 September 2026, on Freeview 33.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on 5Action today

Friday’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.

Trucking Hell, Cops and Gunsmoke carry the mid-morning before the channel splits its late morning and early afternoon between two westerns: Mackenna’s Gold (1969, Gregory Peck) from 10:50am and Bite the Bullet (1975, Gene Hackman and James Coburn) from 1:20pm, each broken by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin rather than shown straight through. Highway Thru Hell picks things back up at 4pm, followed by Britain’s Greatest Bridges, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders and Cops, before the evening proper opens with an Entertainment News on 5 bulletin at 6:55pm.

5Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5Action primetime line-up for tonight, Friday 4 September 2026.

Cops — 5Action, 6:20pm

Cops (series 33, episode 6) rounds off the early-evening cop-show run, followed by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin at 6:55pm.

Cycling: Vuelta a España 2026 — 5Action, 7pm

Rebecca Charlton fronts an hour-long edit of stage 13 action from the Vuelta a España — 192.8km of medium-mountain terrain between Almuñécar and Loja, where the riders finish on the flat. It’s an edited round-up, not live pictures.

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

Nicky Campbell’s high-speed pursuit series takes the 8pm slot (series 5, episode 7), sitting between the hour of Vuelta highlights just gone and Red Dawn at 9pm.

Red Dawn — 5Action, 9pm

Red Dawn (1984), Patrick Swayze’s Cold War invasion thriller, runs from 9pm to 11:20pm, broken by a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin at 10pm before resuming at 10:05pm.

The X-Files — 5Action, 11:20pm

The X-Files (series 6, episode 14) closes out the night.

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?

A highlights-led evening rather than live sport: Cycling: Vuelta a España 2026 rounds up stage 13 at 7pm, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders follows at 8pm, and Red Dawn (1984) takes the 9pm film slot, breaking for a five-minute Entertainment News on 5 bulletin at 10pm before resuming. The X-Files closes the night at 11:20pm. The live Snooker British Open quarter-finals are on Channel 5 tonight, not here. 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

Friday is a fairly typical night for 5Action, once you know where the snooker went. The Snooker British Open quarter-finals have shifted to Channel 5 for both sessions today, so the channel’s own evening reverts to its regular shape: an hour of Vuelta a España highlights at 7pm, Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders at 8pm, and a Patrick Swayze film — Red Dawn (1984) — anchoring the 9pm slot, split by a short news bulletin the way most of this channel’s films are.

The X-Files closes the night once Red Dawn wraps up, and the daytime either side of it runs its usual pattern of two westerns split by news bulletins and a run of cop-show and recovery-truck factual programming. There’s nothing appointment-viewing about it, but it’s the channel doing what it normally does, with live snooker sitting this one out on Channel 5 instead.

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