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

Published: 29 August 2026

5USA is Channel 5’s home for imported American crime and legal drama, the channel that keeps NCIS, Blue Bloods and the Law & Order franchise on British screens night after night. It launched as Five US in October 2006, took the 5USA name in 2011, and has sat inside the Paramount-owned Channel 5 family since 2014. Tonight, Sunday 30 August 2026, there’s no NCIS anywhere on the schedule. Instead the evening belongs to a trio of Columbo television films from 4:50pm, and two episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that close the night at 10pm and 11pm, drawn from opposite ends of the show’s run.

5USA Schedule: Sunday 30 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete 5USA schedule for Sunday 30 August 2026, on Freeview 21.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on 5USA today

Sunday’s schedule opens with two Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes either side of 12am, then two of NCIS: Los Angeles running to just before 4am, with an Entertainment News on 5 bulletin between the two pairs. Teleshopping covers the small hours from 4am, and Ideal World Shopping takes the whole breakfast slot from 6am to 9am. A second Entertainment News bulletin at 9am hands over to Cops, then Blue Bloods runs four episodes back to back through the late morning and into early afternoon, from 9:30am to 1:20pm, series 5 throughout. Columbo takes over from there, with Requiem for a Falling Star at 1:20pm and Negative Reaction at 2:50pm ahead of the evening’s run of television films.

5USA tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the 5USA primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 30 August 2026. Peter Falk’s rumpled detective owns the early evening before a pair of Special Victims Unit cases takes the night home.

Columbo starts before primetime proper and runs into it: Lovely But Lethal, a 1973 case built around a poisoned cosmetics chemist, occupies 4:50pm to 6:20pm, clearing the schedule just as the evening opens.

Columbo: Lady in Waiting — 5USA, 6:20pm

Lady in Waiting dates from 1971 and finds a woman scheming to be free of her overbearing brother, only for Columbo’s habitual second-guessing to unpick the cover story. Like the rest of tonight’s Columbo run, it’s a standalone television film rather than an episode of a weekly series, and its plot has nothing to do with the other two showing either side of it.

Columbo: Death Hits the Jackpot — 5USA, 8pm

The last of the three, Death Hits the Jackpot, is a 1991 entry with Rip Torn as a jeweller whose lottery-winning nephew becomes inconveniently rich. It runs close to two hours, taking the 5USA evening up to 10pm.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — 5USA, 10pm

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit closes out the night with two episodes separated by two decades. The 10pm one reaches right back to the first series: a pregnant woman married into a prominent religious family is found murdered, and the affair behind it turns the case inward on the family itself.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — 5USA, 11pm

The 11pm follow-up keeps Benson at the centre of an uncomfortable case: a defence lawyer is attacked after a police charity function, and the investigation edges uncomfortably close to the department’s own ranks. Running the two together is the kind of pairing 5USA does often, jumping twenty years of the show in the space of an hour.

What kind of shows are on 5USA

NCIS and the naval procedural strand

NCIS is the spine of the schedule. Donald P. Bellisario’s naval investigative drama spun off from JAG in 2003 and has since piled up more than twenty seasons of case-of-the-week plotting, which 5USA works through steadily, usually a season or two behind the current US broadcast.

Law & Order and the Chicago-style franchise format

Dick Wolf’s Law & Order universe, headlined here by Special Victims Unit, is the other pillar. The channel likes to string two or three episodes together in one block, which works because the franchise was built on a rotating cast of detectives and prosecutors rather than a single running story. You can drop in anywhere.

Family and legal drama: Blue Bloods and Bull

Blue Bloods brings the one thing most of 5USA’s imports skip: a family at the centre of the case files, with the Reagans’ dinner-table scenes doing as much work as the investigations. Bull, Michael Weatherly’s post-NCIS drama about a trial-science consultancy, fills a similar afternoon role more lightly. CBS ended it in 2022 after six seasons.

TV movies, classic mystery and reruns

The gaps go to Jesse Stone TV films, Murder She Wrote reruns and reality strands like Cops. Nothing on 5USA is live.

How to watch 5USA

Channel numbers

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

Virgin Media and regional Sky channel numbers can shift slightly depending on your box and area, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t match.

Streaming online

5USA streams live and free at channel5.com and via the 5 app (formerly My5) on smart TVs, iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire TV. You’ll need a free 5 account, which costs nothing to set up. Selected NCIS, Blue Bloods and Law & Order episodes also turn up on demand, though licensing means not everything broadcast makes it there and availability windows vary by title.

5USA +1 and sister channels

5USA +1 runs the same schedule an hour behind on Freeview and Freesat channel 130. If a show has already started on the main channel, it’s just beginning on 5USA +1.

The sister channels split the rest of Channel 5’s imports between them. 5Star takes US reality and lifestyle, 5Action takes films and adventure series, and 5Select, the newest of them, handles documentary and factual.

Frequently asked questions

What’s on 5USA tonight?

Three Columbo television films run through the evening — Lovely But Lethal at 4:50pm, Lady in Waiting at 6:20pm and Death Hits the Jackpot at 8pm — before Law & Order: Special Victims Unit closes the night with two episodes at 10pm and 11pm, one from series 1 and one from series 20. There’s no NCIS anywhere in tonight’s line-up.

What time do the main shows start on 5USA?

Primetime on 5USA typically runs from around 7pm through to midnight, with the headline procedural slot usually landing at 9pm. Daytime hours are mostly given over to earlier seasons of the same shows, run in double or triple bills.

Is 5USA free to watch?

Yes, entirely free to air on Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat. There are ad breaks throughout, as with any commercial channel, but no subscription fee anywhere.

Can I watch 5USA online for free?

Yes. It streams live at channel5.com and through the 5 app; you’ll need a free account. Selected episodes of its biggest shows also appear on demand afterwards, though not every episode makes the cut.

Verdict

Sunday splits into two parts: an afternoon and evening built entirely around Columbo, five separate television films spread across the day with three of them running back to back from 4:50pm, and a late pairing of Special Victims Unit drawn from opposite ends of the show’s run, twenty years apart. There’s no NCIS anywhere today, no live sport, and no plain Law & Order — just the two strands the channel does best.

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