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

Updated: 23 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, Sunday 23 August 2026, is a wartime-adventure-into-blockbusters evening: Von Ryan’s Express holds the pre-primetime slot through to 7pm, before The Greatest Showman, The Mechanic and Transporter 3 run back to back into the small hours.

Film4 Schedule: Sunday 23 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Sunday 23 August 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

It’s a thin day on Film4, with just ten entries across the full 24 hours. First Love (2019), Takashi Miike’s brutal, subtitled Japanese crime-thriller following a boxer dragged into a yakuza scheme, closes out the previous night at 1:35am, and Teleshopping fills the gap from 3:45am through to 11am.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019) opens the day’s proper films at 11am, with Isabela Moner as the young explorer searching Peru for her missing parents, alongside Eva Longoria and Michael Peña. The Lost World (1960) follows at 1:05pm, Claude Rains leading an Amazon expedition in this adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, before The Son of Robin Hood (1958), a swashbuckling follow-up to the Robin Hood legend starring June Laverick, takes the 3pm slot and runs into the early evening.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 23 August 2026.

Von Ryan’s Express — Film4, 4:40pm

Frank Sinatra leads this 1965 Second World War escape thriller as a downed American pilot who ends up in charge of a group of Allied prisoners plotting a breakout from an Italian POW camp by seizing a train. Trevor Howard co-stars as the senior British officer he clashes with over how to run the operation. At two hours twenty minutes, it swallows the whole pre-primetime slot and doesn’t let go until 7pm.

The Greatest Showman — Film4, 7pm

Hugh Jackman plays P.T. Barnum in this 2017 musical, with Zac Efron and Michelle Williams alongside him as the story follows the founding of Barnum’s circus. It opened quietly in the United States and was written off early, then turned into one of the biggest musical hits British cinemas have had, holding its run for months on word of mouth and a soundtrack that outsold the film.

The Mechanic — Film4, 9pm

Jason Statham plays a hitman who takes his murdered mentor’s son under his wing in this 2011 remake, with Donald Sutherland as the mentor whose killing sets the plot in motion. It’s the first half of a Statham double bill tonight, with Transporter 3 following straight after.

Transporter 3 — Film4, 10:50pm

Statham is back for a third outing as courier-for-hire Frank Martin, forced into driving a kidnapped diplomat’s daughter across Europe with a bomb wired to his wrist. It closes out Film4’s evening at 10:50pm.

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 war epic followed by three blockbusters. Von Ryan’s Express (1965), with Frank Sinatra, runs from 4:40pm to 7pm, then The Greatest Showman (2017), with Hugh Jackman, takes over at 7pm. The Mechanic (2011), with Jason Statham and Donald Sutherland, holds the 9pm slot, and Statham is back in Transporter 3 (2008) at 10:50pm. 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 thin even by Film4’s standards, just ten entries across the full day, with Von Ryan’s Express through to Transporter 3 making up four of them. The Greatest Showman is the pick if you want something the whole household will sit through, a musical that found its real audience on repeat TV plays rather than in cinemas. The Mechanic and Transporter 3 either side of it are straightforward Statham vehicles, decent enough for background viewing but not appointment television, and Von Ryan’s Express at 4:40pm is the one worth catching if you’re home early and fancy an old-fashioned wartime escape story.

Watch

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