Film4 TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On Film4 Tonight

Film4 is the UK’s free-to-air film channel, on Freeview 14. It dropped its subscription fee on 23 July 2006 and has run on advertising ever since. Tonight, Sunday 16 August 2026, Dog opens primetime at 7:05pm, Missing follows at 9pm and Kingsman: The Golden Circle closes the night from 11:15pm.

Film4 Schedule: Sunday 16 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Sunday 16 August 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Jane Schoenbrun’s unsettling 2021 debut about a teenager drawn into an online horror role-play game, opens the small hours at 1:10am. Teleshopping then runs through until 11am.

Deck the Halls, the 2006 festive comedy that pits Matthew Broderick’s fussy optometrist against Danny DeVito’s new neighbour in a Christmas-lights arms race, opens the daytime schedule at 11am. Playing with Fire follows at 12:50pm, John Cena leading a crew of smokejumpers who find themselves minding three rescued children until social services can take over. Enemy Mine airs at 2:45pm, Wolfgang Petersen’s 1985 sci-fi drama stranding a human pilot and an alien soldier together on a hostile planet and forcing them to cooperate to survive. The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Ray Harryhausen’s 1973 stop-motion fantasy quest for a map to a lost continent, closes the afternoon at 4:55pm before Dog opens the evening at 7:05pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 16 August 2026: a road-trip comedy, a screen-life thriller and a spy sequel, back to back.

Dog — Film4, 7:05pm

Channing Tatum co-directs and stars in this 2022 comedy-drama as a former Army Ranger driving a difficult Belgian Malinois down the Pacific coast to a fellow soldier’s funeral. It plays broader than it sounds early on, then earns the harder moments once the pair’s shared damage comes to the surface.

Missing — Film4, 9pm

Storm Reid carries the flagship 9pm slot as a teenager who turns amateur investigator when her mother disappears on a Colombian holiday with a new boyfriend, piecing everything together through webcams, ride-share receipts and old email logins. A 2023 follow-up to Searching, built on the same screen-bound format, and sharper than that description makes it sound.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle — Film4, 11:15pm

Taron Egerton is back as Eggsy for this 2017 sequel, in which the levelling of Kingsman’s headquarters pushes the agency into an uneasy partnership with its swaggering American counterpart, the Statesman. Julianne Moore’s cheerfully unhinged drug baron is the best thing in it, even as the plot sprawls well past the tight running time of the first film.

What kind of films are on Film4?

Hollywood and recent theatrical releases

A good chunk of the schedule is mainstream Hollywood: films that played UK multiplexes and reached television a couple of years later. The bigger, more recent titles go in the 9pm and 6.30pm slots, where the audience is widest.

British cinema and Film4 Productions

Film4 Productions, the channel’s film-funding arm, has backed British cinema since 1982, originally trading as Channel Four Films. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Trainspotting, This Is England, 12 Years a Slave, Poor Things. Four decades of co-productions, and the reason the channel gets more benefit of the doubt than its commercial rivals.

World cinema, independent and cult film

Film4 shows more subtitled film than any other British free-to-air channel, mostly after 11pm, alongside cult American independents and things that never got a proper UK release. That late shift is the best thing about it.

How to watch Film4

Channel numbers

Where to find Film4 on the main UK platforms:

Film4 is free on all of the above, with no subscription required. Virgin Media and Freesat numbers can vary by box and region, so check your on-screen guide if these don’t match.

Streaming online

Film4 streams live and free at channel4.com/now/f4 and via the Channel 4 app on smart TVs, iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire TV. You’ll need a free Channel 4 account, which takes a couple of minutes to set up. Films that have aired often turn up on demand in the Film4 collection afterwards, but licensing means plenty of them never do, and the ones that make it don’t stay long.

Film4 +1 and catching a film you missed

Film4 +1 runs the same schedule an hour behind, on Freeview 47 and Sky 314. Sit down at 10:15pm with the 9pm premiere already 75 minutes gone and +1 lets you start it near the beginning instead of writing the evening off.

If you miss a film outright and it never appears on demand, wait. Film4 reruns titles fairly regularly, usually in themed seasons or when a director or actor is back in the news, so searching a week or two ahead in your on-screen guide often turns one up.

Frequently asked questions

What’s on Film4 tonight?

Dog, Channing Tatum’s 2022 road-trip comedy-drama, opens primetime at 7:05pm; Missing, the 2023 screen-life thriller starring Storm Reid, takes the 9pm slot; and Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the 2017 spy sequel with Taron Egerton and Julianne Moore, closes the night from 11:15pm. Full times for the rest of the evening are in the schedule table above.

What time do films start on Film4?

Typically around 11am, 2pm, 4pm, 6.30pm, 9pm, and 11pm to midnight. Running lengths shift the exact times day to day, so your on-screen guide has the most accurate information.

Is Film4 free to watch?

Yes, and it has been since it left subscription in July 2006. Expect ad breaks during films, but no fee on any platform.

Can I watch Film4 online for free?

Yes, live at channel4.com or through the Channel 4 app, with a free account.

Verdict

I rate Film4, with reservations. The 9pm slot and the run after 11pm are what keep me coming back: recent releases, the odd Productions title, and foreign-language cinema you’d rarely stumble across on any other free channel. Daytime is mostly the same forty-odd Hollywood titles on rotation, and the ad breaks mid-film wear thin some nights.

Tonight’s line-up leans genre rather than prestige: a road-trip comedy, a screen-life thriller and a spy sequel that never sits still. Dog is the warmest of the three, Tatum’s scenes with his canine co-star doing more work than the plot strictly needs. Missing is the sharpest, turning a limited visual gimmick into a properly tense hour and a half. Kingsman: The Golden Circle closes the night on spectacle rather than restraint, Moore’s villain carrying more of the film than the script does.

Watch

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