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

Dave is UKTV’s comedy and entertainment channel, and almost everything it broadcasts belongs to somebody else. The exception is Red Dwarf, which Dave revived in 2009 with the original cast and has been trading on ever since. UKTV became a wholly owned subsidiary of BBC Studios in 2021 and renamed the channel U&Dave in July 2024, when it pushed the whole portfolio under a single “U” brand. Nobody calls it that. Tonight, Monday 17 August 2026, a four-episode run of Rick Stein’s Cornwall opens the evening from 5pm, Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing takes the 7:05pm slot, and two editions of Would I Lie To You? follow either side of 8pm. Have I Got a Bit More News for You, QI XL and Taskmaster carry the schedule through to midnight. Channel numbers are further down the page.

Dave Schedule: Monday 17 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Dave schedule for Monday 17 August 2026, on Freeview 19.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Dave today

Monday’s Dave day opens with a pair of Live at the Apollo repeats, Iain Stirling handling the introductions for Harriet Dyer and Maria Shehata at midnight before Tim Renkow takes over at 1am with Janine Harouni and Stuart Goldsmith. An extended QI XL follows at 2:05am, Sandi Toksvig steering Tom Allen, Melanie Bracewell, Desiree Burch and Alan Davies through a vets-themed edition, then two runs of Parks and Recreation cover 3:05am to 4am before teleshopping fills the gap until Top Gear returns at 7:25am, Clarkson and May putting a Reasonably Priced Car through its paces with Hugh Grant behind the wheel.

Border Force America’s Gatekeepers has two outings from 8:15am, following US border officers dealing with a hidden drug shipment and a fentanyl seizure in the first hour, then a false-passport baby case and a medical emergency at the crossing in the second. Rick Stein’s Cornwall gets an early daytime slot too, at 10:20am and 10:50am, ahead of a new Yukon Gold at 11:20am and two more instalments of Top Gear from 12:20pm, one built around a mobility-scooter project and the other a tribute to Saab. Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing has its first outing of the day at 2:20pm, Paul and Bob after crucian carp on a Wiltshire lake, before Guy Martin swaps engineering for mountain rescue work on the Calf of Man at 3pm and Hairy Bikers’ Best of British closes out the afternoon at 4pm with a rice pudding and a stuffed cabbage leaf. The evening schedule below begins from there.

Dave tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Dave primetime line-up for tonight, Monday 17 August 2026, which gets going with a Rick Stein’s Cornwall stack at 5pm.

Rick Stein’s Cornwall — Dave, 5pm

Four Rick Stein’s Cornwall episodes run back to back from 5pm to just after 7pm. The run opens with a cheese obsessive who tastes 700 samples a week and a detour into Newlyn’s art history, then moves on to Cornwall’s role in imperial communications and a visit to William Golding’s daughter. The last two head out on the water: a tour of the Camel Estuary that takes in Stein’s long-standing fish supplier, and a razor-clam dive that finishes at the Penlee Museum. It’s the block that closes out most Dave weekday early evenings, and a genuinely varied one this time rather than a single theme stretched across four episodes.

Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing — Dave, 7:05pm

Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer are on a Wiltshire lake chasing crucian carp, one of the trickier species to land, with the early start feeding their usual double act about being unsuited to the hours fishing demands. It’s a repeat of the same outing that aired in the early afternoon, just under seven hours earlier on the same channel.

Would I Lie To You? — Dave, 7:40pm

Two rounds of the fact-or-fiction panel show run either side of 8pm. Rob Brydon hosts both. In the first, David Mitchell and Lee Mack pick their way through stories from June Brown, Seann Walsh, Adrian Chiles and Aisling Bea; the second is a compilation special stitched together from cut material, gags that missed earlier episodes getting a second airing.

Have I Got a Bit More News for You — Dave, 9pm

Sue Perkins takes the guest chair for this rerun, with comedian Michelle Wolf and journalist Tom Peck sitting alongside regular team captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop.

QI XL — Dave, 10pm

The extended cut of the vets-themed episode gets a second airing tonight, having already opened the schedule at 2:05am. Sandi Toksvig hosts Tom Allen, Melanie Bracewell, Desiree Burch and the ever-present Alan Davies.

Taskmaster — Dave, 11pm

Greg Davies and Alex Horne’s series four run continues with a task-heavy episode that has Joe Lycett showing no sympathy for a prop camel and Hugh Dennis wrestling with a sleeping bag challenge. It closes out the night.

What kind of shows are on Dave

Panel shows and comedy institutions

This is the channel’s whole personality. Would I Lie to You?, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Mock the Week when it’s in rotation: two decades of British panel comedy, nearly all of it bought in from the BBC and Channel 4 rather than commissioned here. What Dave adds is the scheduling. Episodes come in blocks you can drop into at any point and leave whenever you like, which is a different way of watching television and, on a weeknight, not the worst one.

Sitcoms: archive and revivals

Red Dwarf is the one thing Dave can properly call its own. The channel brought it back in 2009, a decade after the BBC finished with it, and got Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules and Robert Llewellyn all to return. Not Going Out is the other long runner, still in production after more than fifteen years.

Factual entertainment and documentaries

A thinner strand of observational and scripted-reality shows fills the gaps: Highland Cops, Meet the Richardsons and similar, mostly parked in daytime. It’s ballast between the comedy blocks.

How to watch Dave

Channel numbers

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

Dave is free on all of the above platforms, with no subscription required. Channel numbers can vary slightly by region and set-top box, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t match.

Streaming online

Dave streams live and on demand for free on U, UKTV’s streaming service, at u.co.uk and through the U app on smart TVs, iOS, Android and Amazon Fire TV. U was called UKTV Play until the 2024 rebrand. You need a free account, and there are ad breaks, the same ones you’d sit through on a TV set.

Dave ja vu and sister channels

Dave ja vu is the timeshift channel, running the main schedule an hour behind under a pun that has somehow survived since the 2000s. It’s on Freeview 74, and coverage is patchier than the main signal because it shares broadcast capacity with local TV services in parts of the country. Where reception is thin, the U app is the better fallback for anything you’ve missed.

The rest of the family: U&Drama, U&Yesterday and U&W free to air, with U&Gold, U&Alibi and U&Eden behind pay-TV. All of them sit in the same app.

Frequently asked questions

What channel is Dave on Freeview?

Dave is on Freeview channel 19, and Dave ja vu on 74.

What’s on Dave tonight?

Tonight, Monday 17 August 2026: four episodes of Rick Stein’s Cornwall run from 5pm, then Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing at 7:05pm and two rounds of Would I Lie To You? at 7:40pm and 8:20pm. Have I Got a Bit More News for You takes the 9pm slot, QI XL follows at 10pm, and Taskmaster closes the night at 11pm.

Who hosts QI and Would I Lie to You??

QI is hosted by Sandi Toksvig, with Alan Davies the permanent panellist since 2003. Would I Lie to You? is hosted by Rob Brydon, with David Mitchell and Lee Mack as team captains since the show began in 2007.

Can I watch Dave online for free?

Yes, free on U at u.co.uk or in the U app. You’ll need an account, and it’s ad-supported.

Verdict

Monday’s schedule leans hard on repeats even by Dave’s usual standards. The four-episode Rick Stein’s Cornwall block that opens the evening is a genuine mixed bag, cheese tasting and art history giving way to estuary boats and razor clams, but Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing at 7:05pm is the same Wiltshire outing that aired at 2:20pm that afternoon, and QI XL’s 10pm slot repeats the 2:05am edition from earlier the same day.

Would I Lie To You? gets two goes either side of 8pm, one a proper episode and the other a clips compilation, before Sue Perkins hosts Have I Got a Bit More News for You at 9pm and Taskmaster’s series four run closes the night at 11pm. None of it is new, but the Rick Stein run carries enough variety across its four episodes to be worth catching on its own terms.

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