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

Published: 21 August 2026

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, Saturday 22 August 2026, a short interview filler leads into three films back to back: Free Guy from 6:50pm, LA Confidential at 9pm and 65 closing the night at 11:45pm.

Film4 Schedule: Saturday 22 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Saturday 22 August 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

It’s a lean day on Film4, with just twelve entries covering the full 24 hours. Little Monsters closes out the previous night at 1:10am, and Teleshopping fills the small hours from 3am through to 11am.

Sherlock Holmes: Terror by Night (1946), Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s wartime mystery set aboard a London-to-Edinburgh sleeper train, opens the day’s proper films at 11am. A five-minute Film4 Interview Programmes: Talking Film slot breaks up the schedule at 12:20pm — a chat segment between films, not a film itself — before Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) takes the 12:25pm slot, followed by its 2013 sequel, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, at 2:15pm. Hidden Figures (2016) then runs from 4:10pm into the early evening, with Janelle Monáe, Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer as the NASA mathematicians whose work put John Glenn into orbit.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Saturday 22 August 2026.

American Gangster Special — Film4, 6:40pm

A ten-minute interview filler ahead of the evening’s first film, not a programme worth clearing your evening for.

Free Guy — Film4, 6:50pm

Free Guy (2021) opens the proper evening at 6:50pm. Ryan Reynolds plays a bank teller who discovers he’s a background character in an open-world video game and starts writing his own script. Broad, likeable studio comedy with a decent joke rate.

LA Confidential — Film4, 9pm

Curtis Hanson’s LA Confidential (1997) is the pick of the night. Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce play three LAPD detectives circling the same case from different angles in 1950s Los Angeles, with Kim Basinger’s Oscar-winning turn as a call girl caught between them. Adapted from James Ellroy’s novel, it’s as tightly plotted a noir as American cinema has produced since the genre’s original run.

65 — Film4, 11:45pm

65 (2023) closes the night. Adam Driver plays a crash-landed astronaut fighting to survive on prehistoric Earth alongside a young passenger, with dinosaurs standing in for the usual monster-movie threat. Late-slot popcorn sci-fi rather than anything ambitious.

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?

A short interview filler, then three films. American Gangster Special opens at 6:40pm, a ten-minute piece ahead of Free Guy (2021), with Ryan Reynolds, at 6:50pm. LA Confidential (1997), with Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, takes the 9pm slot, and 65 (2023), with Adam Driver, closes the night at 11:45pm. Full times for the rest of the day 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 is a quiet night by Film4’s own standards — just twelve entries across the full day, and only three of them films. LA Confidential at 9pm is the pick by some distance: a proper 1990s noir with a cast most channels couldn’t assemble for a new production, let alone a rerun. Free Guy and 65 either side of it are lighter, studio-shaped viewing, and the American Gangster Special filler at 6:40pm is worth skipping if you’d rather start the evening with Free Guy at 6:50pm instead.

Watch

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