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

5Star is Channel 5’s reality and factual-entertainment channel, built on the landlord, tenant and bailiff documentaries that made its daytime reputation, plus imported true-story series and Piers Morgan’s nightly opinion slot. It’s part of the Paramount-owned Channel 5 stable and free to watch on Freeview 32. Tonight, Sunday 16 August 2026, the channel sticks to its factual roots: four straight episodes of Police Interceptors run from 5pm to 9pm, then three hour-long medical documentaries — Trauma Room One, Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death and A&E After Dark — carry the schedule on to midnight. There’s no soap anywhere on Freeview tonight; it’s Sunday, and none of the terrestrial channels schedule one.

5Star Schedule: Sunday 16 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5Star schedule for Sunday 16 August 2026, on Freeview 32.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on 5Star today

The overnight run opens with a two-hour edition of When Parties Go Horribly Wrong at 12:20am, before Killer at the Crime Scene (series 4, episode 7) takes the 2:20am slot and Car Pound Cops (series 2, episode 7) follows at 3:10am. Teleshopping then holds the schedule from 4am through to 7am.

Sunday’s daytime opens with two shopping strands, Shop: Must Have Ideas at 7am and eFOLDi Mobility Scooters at 7:30am, before four back-to-back episodes of Friends run from 8am to 10am (series 9, episode 24 through series 10, episode 3). Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords takes the 10am hour (series 5, episode 4), then two editions of Shoplifters: Caught Red Handed carry the schedule to 1pm. Four episodes of Traffic Cops fill the early afternoon from 1pm to 5pm, before Police Interceptors takes over to lead into the evening lineup below.

5Star tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5Star primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 16 August 2026.

Police Interceptors — 5Star, 5pm-9pm

Four episodes of Police Interceptors dominate the start of the evening, all built around South Yorkshire’s Road Crime Unit. A drink-driver eludes officers before a helicopter helps run down a wanted motorcyclist at 5pm, and a two-county chase involving twenty cars and a pair of helicopters follows at 6pm. Things get more chaotic at 7pm: an armed man is chased down after drink-driving through a graveyard, and elsewhere a night out ends when a brawl breaks out between revellers. By 8pm, one motorist is legging it on foot, another tries a hopeless disguise, and a third — already banned from driving — gets caught anyway.

Trauma Room One — 5Star, 9pm

At 9pm, Trauma Room One (series 1, episode 8) moves the channel from blue lights to operating theatres, following surgeons at Liverpool’s Walton Centre as they work quickly to clear disc and bone pressing on a patient’s neck.

Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death — 5Star, 10pm

At 10pm, Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death (series 2, episode 3) follows Hosam Serag and Rupesh Bhatt as they operate on a 33-year-old man, tracking down tumours after his testicular cancer reached as far as his heart.

A&E After Dark — 5Star, 11pm

At 11pm, A&E After Dark (series 3, episode 3) follows the overnight team at Hull Royal Infirmary as they fight to rescue the vision of a 51-year-old woman hurt by a tent peg to the eye.

What kind of shows are on 5Star

Landlord, tenant and bailiff documentaries

This is where 5Star has its own patch. Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords and its spin-off Extreme Nightmare Tenants follow eviction specialists and rogue-landlord investigations, while Call the Bailiffs: Time to Pay Up! turns the same doorstep tension towards unpaid debt. No other British free-to-air channel gives this much schedule space to the subject.

Reality, true-story and consumer documentary

Skin A&E, Dirty Home Rescue and Scam City: Don’t Get Caught Out! cover the rest of the factual output, and imports such as Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly Australia bring in versions of formats British viewers already know from the domestic originals.

Opinion, news and chat

Piers Morgan Uncensored gives 5Star a nightly dose of studio argument, a YouTube-native format repurposed for a terrestrial evening slot since the 2025 deal.

Sitcom reruns

Friends is the channel’s long-serving gap-filler, though these days it tends to surface in the small hours rather than in the morning blocks it once held.

How to watch 5Star

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find 5Star across the main UK television platforms:

5Star is free on all of the above platforms, with no subscription required. Virgin Media and Freesat channel numbers may vary slightly depending on your box and region, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t match.

Streaming online

5Star streams live and free at channel5.com and via the 5 app (formerly known as My5, before Channel 5’s 2025 rebrand unified its linear and streaming services under one name) on smart TVs, iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire TV. You’ll need a free account, which costs nothing to set up. Many 5Star programmes also turn up on demand, though not every title stays available indefinitely.

5Star +1 and sister channels

5Star+1 plays the same schedule an hour behind, which is useful on a channel that so often runs three episodes of the same series in a row. It’s on Sky (228), Virgin Media (326) and Freesat (141). There’s no +1 slot for 5Star on Freeview, so Freeview viewers who miss the start of something have to pick it up on demand.

5Star sits alongside two other channels in the Paramount-owned Channel 5 family. 5USA, on Freeview 33, carries US crime dramas and imported procedurals. 5Action, on Freeview 21, focuses on action films and adventure series. All three, plus the main Channel 5, stream together through the 5 app.

Frequently asked questions

What channel is 5Star on Freeview?

5Star is on Freeview channel 32. It’s also on Sky (128), Virgin Media (126) and Freesat (131), all free with no subscription.

What’s on 5Star tonight?

It’s Sunday, so there’s no soap anywhere on Freeview tonight. 5Star runs four episodes of Police Interceptors from 5pm to 9pm, then hands over to a run of medical documentaries: Trauma Room One at 9pm, Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death at 10pm, and A&E After Dark closing out the night at 11pm. The schedule table above has the exact times for each.

Can I watch 5Star online for free?

Yes. It streams live at channel5.com and through the 5 app (formerly My5); you’ll need a free account. Many programmes also appear on demand afterwards.

Verdict

Sunday plays to 5Star’s core strength rather than departing from it. Four hours of Police Interceptors open the evening, then the channel switches to the medical documentaries — Trauma Room One, Surgeons: A Matter of Life or Death and A&E After Dark — that fill so much of its schedule. There’s no soap anywhere tonight, since none of Freeview’s terrestrial channels carry one at the weekend.

It’s a straightforward, uninterrupted run: no films to break up the evening, just one factual strand handing over to the next, right through to midnight. The daytime schedule backs it up with the usual mix of Traffic Cops, Friends reruns and Shoplifters: Caught Red Handed.

Related: What’s On TV Tonight | Channel 5 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Films on TV This Week