E4 TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On E4 Tonight

Published: 27 August 2026

E4 is Channel 4’s younger-skewing entertainment channel: American sitcom reruns through the day, reality formats after dark, and the Hollyoaks first-look Monday to Wednesday at 7pm. Friday 28 August 2026 has no Hollyoaks — the first-look run stops after Wednesday, so the 7pm slot goes to The Simpsons instead. That means E4 stacks six Simpsons episodes back to back from 5pm to 8pm, but not as one run: the 5pm to 6:30pm quartet comes from series 27, then the schedule jumps back three decades for a 1995 double at 7pm and 7:30pm. Ladies of London: The New Reign follows at 8pm and, despite the “Brand new series” tag still attached to it, is actually the show’s fifth episode. Doctor Strange takes the 9pm film slot, and Bad Boys for Life closes the night at 11:20pm.

E4 Schedule: Friday 28 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete E4 schedule for Friday 28 August 2026, on Freeview 13.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on E4 today

Overnight opens with Naked Attraction at 12:05am, then Cruising Paradise: Above & Below Deck at 1:10am and Ladies of London: The New Reign’s fourth episode at 2:10am, before Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA at 3am. Two episodes of The Goldbergs and three of Brooklyn Nine-Nine carry the graveyard shift through to 6am.

There’s no Hollyoaks anywhere on E4 today, not even as a repeat — the first-look run is Monday to Wednesday and Friday has none of it, in any slot. Two episodes of Modern Family fill 6am and 6:30am instead, then a short Rude(ish) Tube Shorts and Couples Come Dine with Me lead into breakfast. Two more episodes of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA run from 8am to 10am.

America’s Funniest Home Videos takes 10am and 11am, then four episodes of The Simpsons, all from series 21, run from midday to 1:30pm. Two of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and four of Modern Family carry the afternoon to 5pm. A second run of four Simpsons episodes, this time from series 27, takes the schedule from 5pm to 6:30pm and into the start of primetime, before the evening jumps back to 1995 for the 7pm and 7:30pm slots that Hollyoaks would otherwise have held.

E4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the E4 primetime line-up for tonight, Friday 28 August 2026.

The Simpsons — E4, 6pm

Simprovised (series 27) closes out the afternoon Simpsons run: a work speech goes badly wrong for Homer, and he turns to improv classes to rebuild his nerve.

The Simpsons — E4, 6:30pm

Orange Is the New Yellow, also series 27, has Marge handed a jail sentence over a child neglect charge — and finds parts of the experience an odd relief from the chaos at home.

The Simpsons — E4, 7pm

The schedule then jumps back three decades. Two Dozen and One Greyhounds, a 1995 episode from series 6, has Mr Burns plotting to turn Santa’s Little Helper’s puppies into a coat.

The Simpsons — E4, 7:30pm

The PTA Disbands, from the same 1995 run, follows straight after: Bart spots his chance in a teachers’ dispute and tries to get the school shut for good. That’s six Simpsons episodes back to back since 5pm, split across two eras thirty years apart — the run only turns properly primetime with this 7pm double.

Ladies of London: The New Reign — E4, 8pm

The “brand new series” tag still attached to this one is boilerplate rather than fact: it’s the fifth episode (“Martha in the Middle”), not a launch. Margo and Emma throw rival dinner parties, and Mark-Francis stirs a rumour about Margo into the mix.

Doctor Strange — E4, 9pm

E4’s film of the night is Doctor Strange (2016), with Benedict Cumberbatch as the neurosurgeon-turned-sorcerer drawn into a battle between light and dark that spans several dimensions. At two hours twenty minutes, it runs well past 11pm.

Bad Boys for Life — E4, 11:20pm

Bad Boys for Life (2020) follows, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence back as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett — this time with Lowrey the target of an assassination plot from a crime lord’s widow. It runs to shortly before 2am.

Popular shows on E4

Reality

Married at First Sight Australia is E4’s most-watched acquisition and the one that reorders the whole schedule when a series is on. Three or four episodes a week, strangers paired off by “experts”, married at first meeting, then sat at a dinner party until somebody says the unforgivable thing. The UK version plays much quieter. Its couples absorb the pressure rather than detonate at the table, which is more realistic and considerably less watchable.

Celebs Go Dating has been on E4 since 2016 and has never changed shape: two relationship coaches, currently Paul C. Brunson and Anna Williamson, a handful of celebrity clients, and dates with members of the public.

Soap

Hollyoaks has been on Channel 4 since 1995 and in E4’s first-look slot long enough that most viewers under 35 have never known it any other way. It takes on the heavy issue storylines soaps go in for, mental health and addiction and the rest, while keeping the pace quick and the cast young.

US comedy

The Big Bang Theory, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Modern Family anchor daytime, and all three sit on Channel 4’s streaming service on demand. The Simpsons is the exception to everything. E4 holds so much of it that a single day can jump across two decades of the show without anyone at the channel appearing to mind.

How to watch E4

Channel numbers

Where to find E4 by platform:

E4 is free-to-air everywhere. A Freeview aerial carries it, and so does every Sky package as standard.

Streaming

E4 streams live and on demand for free through Channel 4’s app and channel4.com, covering smart TVs, iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Roku and most streaming sticks. Registration is free and asks for no payment details. Adverts play regardless. The full E4 library is there as well, including complete runs of Married at First Sight Australia and MAFS UK, and Hollyoaks as catch-up after transmission.

E4 +1, E4 Extra and the Channel 4 family

E4 +1 on Freeview 30 is a straight one-hour timeshift, so 7pm here is 8pm there.

E4 Extra is the sister channel for repeats and extra runs of E4’s biggest shows. It launched in 2022 in the slot 4Music vacated, and sits on Freeview 31 and Sky 139.

Both sit in the wider Channel 4 family alongside the main channel, More4 for factual and Film4 for cinema. All of them are commercially funded. Channel 4 is publicly owned but takes no licence fee money and no government subsidy, a distinction worth remembering the next time somebody complains about the adverts.

Frequently asked questions

What’s on E4 tonight?

E4 has two films tonight, not none — Doctor Strange at 9pm and Bad Boys for Life at 11:20pm — and no Hollyoaks, since the first-look run stops after Wednesday and hands the 7pm slot to The Simpsons instead. E4 runs six Simpsons episodes back to back from 5pm to 8pm, split across two eras: a series 27 run through to 6:30pm, then a 1995 double at 7pm and 7:30pm. Ladies of London: The New Reign is at 8pm — its fifth episode, not the launch its “brand new series” tag implies. Times are in the schedule table above.

Does E4 have adverts?

Yes. It is a commercial channel, so ad breaks run on linear TV and on the streaming free tier alike. No licence fee, no subscription. Record it on a PVR and you can skip them as usual.

When did E4 launch?

E4 launched on 18 January 2001 as a companion to Channel 4, aimed at younger viewers from day one. It began as a subscription service, later went free-to-air, and reached Freeview in May 2005.

Verdict

Friday is a fuller night than usual for E4, with two films in primetime and no Hollyoaks anywhere in the schedule. The first-look run only goes Monday to Wednesday, so the channel fills 7pm and 7:30pm with a 1995 Simpsons double instead, coming straight after a more recent series 27 run at 5pm to 6:30pm — six episodes across the evening, but from two different decades. Ladies of London: The New Reign is at 8pm, its fifth episode rather than the launch the “brand new series” flag suggests. Doctor Strange takes the 9pm slot and Bad Boys for Life follows at 11:20pm.

Daytime runs on a tighter set of strands than the evening: Naked Attraction and overnight repeats of Cruising Paradise and Ladies of London carry the small hours, two episodes of Modern Family and Couples Come Dine with Me lead into Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA at breakfast, and The Simpsons anchors both the middle of the day and the run-up to primetime around Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Modern Family — a schedule built on a small number of strands repeated through the day rather than a wide daily spread.

Related: What’s On TV Tonight | Channel 4 TV Guide | E4 Schedule | Films on TV This Week