BBC Four (BBC 4) TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On BBC Four Tonight

Published: 21 September 2026

BBC Four is the BBC’s home for arts, culture, history, music and archive documentary, and unlike almost everything else on the electronic programme guide it simply isn’t there during the day. A “programmes start at 7.00pm” holding card fills the schedule from first thing in the morning through the whole afternoon; the channel actually opens two minutes early, at 6:58pm, with the short This is BBC Four ident, and CBeebies takes it back at 6am. It sits on Freeview channel 9, carries no advertising because the licence fee pays for it, and puts more or less everything it broadcasts onto BBC iPlayer afterwards. Tonight, Tuesday 22 September 2026, opens on Canals: The Making of a Nation at 7pm and The Lakes with Paul Rose at 7:30pm, before a sitcom double bill, To the Manor Born and Keeping Up Appearances, takes 8pm and 8:30pm. The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family runs at 9pm, and the evening closes on The Beginning and End of the Universe, Japan’s Master of Restoration and Dial ‘B’ for Britain: The Story of the Landline. Full breakdown below.

BBC Four Schedule: Tuesday 22 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete BBC Four schedule for Tuesday 22 September 2026, on Freeview 9.

Overnight

Morning

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

BBC Four tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the BBC Four primetime line-up for tonight, Tuesday 22 September 2026.

This is BBC Four — BBC Four, 6:58pm

The two-minute ident that opens proceedings early, same as every night.

Canals: The Making of a Nation — BBC Four, 7pm

Liz McIvor turns to the Manchester Ship Canal this episode, a piece of Victorian engineering built on a scale that dwarfs most of what came before it (series 1, episode 4).

The Lakes with Paul Rose — BBC Four, 7:30pm

Paul Rose spends this episode cycling and rock climbing around Coniston, a more physical itinerary than most nature-strand presenters get handed (series 1, episode 3).

To the Manor Born — BBC Four, 8pm

A 1980 episode in which Audrey gets a visitor who has no idea how much has changed at Grantleigh Manor since it was sold (series 2, episode 2). It runs alongside a second vintage sitcom tonight rather than a factual hour.

Keeping Up Appearances — BBC Four, 8:30pm

Hyacinth talks Richard into a spot of electrical work at the church hall, and it goes about as smoothly as anything Hyacinth organises ever does (series 4, episode 7).

The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family — BBC Four, 9pm

This episode picks up as Anne Boleyn returns from the French court and starts to reshape the Tudor court around her. The series treats her rise as a story about the whole family’s ambitions rather than a straightforward royal romance, which makes it worth staying with even if you know how it ends.

The Beginning and End of the Universe — BBC Four, 10pm

Jim Al-Khalili works through how everything eventually finishes, including a section on a force cosmologists still haven’t pinned down (series 1, episode 2).

Japan’s Master of Restoration — BBC Four, 11pm

An 18th-century Chinese vase gets assessed by the Mayuyamas, working out both its condition and what it’s actually worth (series 1, episode 3).

Dial ‘B’ for Britain: The Story of the Landline — BBC Four, 11:50pm

Victoria Coren Mitchell narrates a history of the British telephone network to close out the night (series 17, episode 3).

What kind of shows are on BBC Four

Documentaries, history and the natural history archive

This is the backbone of the schedule. Attenborough series like Life on Earth sit alongside Natural World instalments and long-running science and history strands. Very little of it is new. Most has already had at least one outing on BBC One or BBC Two, and BBC Four is where it airs again a few years later.

Music archive: Top of the Pops and BBC Four Sessions

On plenty of nights the schedule turns to music once the evening’s main strand is done, with vintage Top of the Pops and Old Grey Whistle Test repeats among the regulars and the odd BBC Four Sessions recording running into the small hours. Some of those performances aren’t shown anywhere else on television. Tonight it’s the main event rather than a late addition, covered in full below.

Tonight’s mix: canal history, a sitcom double bill and the Boleyns

There’s no BBC Four to speak of before 6:58pm. A “programmes start at 7.00pm” holding card runs in blocks from 5:30am through the entire day, and the channel doesn’t reopen until the two-minute This is BBC Four ident, a little ahead of its own schedule, at 6:58pm. The evening opens on Canals: The Making of a Nation and The Lakes with Paul Rose, before a To the Manor Born and Keeping Up Appearances double bill takes 8pm and 8:30pm. The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family runs at 9pm, and the schedule closes on physics, antiques restoration and telecoms history through to just before midnight.

How to watch BBC Four

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find BBC Four across the main UK television platforms:

BBC Four is free to watch on all of the above, though you’ll need a valid UK TV licence to watch it live, the same as any other BBC channel. Virgin Media and Freesat numbers can shift slightly by region, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t quite match.

Streaming online

BBC Four streams live and free through BBC iPlayer, on smart TVs, phones, tablets, games consoles and in a browser at bbc.co.uk/iplayer. You’ll need a free BBC account to sign in. Once you’re in, BBC Four sits with the other BBC channels under the “Channels” tab, and its archive series are browsable separately.

BBC Four and BBC iPlayer

The live broadcast runs on iPlayer in full, so anything between 7pm and closedown can be watched as it goes out or picked up shortly after. The archive is the more useful half, though. It reaches a long way past whatever fits into one evening: full Attenborough box sets, older documentary strands that stopped getting a repeat slot years ago, music collections that only surface on air at two in the morning. If you like the idea of BBC Four more than you like remembering to switch it on at 9pm, that is where to start.

Frequently asked questions

Does BBC Four have adverts?

No. It’s funded by the licence fee, so there are no ad breaks anywhere in the schedule.

Is BBC Four free to watch?

There’s no separate subscription for BBC Four itself, but you do need a TV licence to watch it live, or to watch most of it back on iPlayer, the same as any other BBC channel.

What is the relationship between BBC Four and BBC Three?

Shared history rather than a shared schedule. BBC Three closed as a broadcast channel in 2016 and spent six years online-only before returning to linear TV in February 2022. That return reshuffled channel numbers on some platforms; on Virgin Media, the two now sit next to each other at 107 and 108. Over roughly the same stretch BBC Four stopped commissioning much new original programming and moved towards repeats and archive. The nightly live broadcast never went away.

Verdict

BBC Four is one of the better-value channels on British free television, provided you know what you’re going there for. Most nights, nothing on it is new. What’s on it is a decent share of the best things the BBC has ever made, given a proper repeat run years after it first went out.

Tonight fits that pattern closely: nothing until 6:58pm, then two classic sitcoms carry the first half of the evening rather than a single documentary strand, before The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family takes 9pm. A physics documentary and an antiques-restoration profile follow at 10pm and 11pm, and a history of the landline closes out the night just before midnight. Nothing live is being shown, so it suits anyone happy to settle into a slower-paced evening rather than someone chasing a single big event.

Related: What’s On TV Tonight | BBC One TV Guide | Films on TV This Week