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

Published: 25 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, Wednesday 26 August 2026, the classic comedy Harvey effectively owns the pre-evening slot, running from 4:35pm to 6:45pm, when Sean Connery heist thriller Entrapment takes over. Dale Dickey’s The G follows at 9pm, and Christopher Nolan’s Memento closes the night at 11:10pm.

Film4 Schedule: Wednesday 26 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Wednesday 26 August 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

It’s a thin day on Film4, with just eleven entries across the full 24 hours and only ten unique titles once the two Teleshopping slots are counted together. Teleshopping runs from 3:35am through to 11am.

Patrick opens the daytime films at 11am, a 2018 British comedy with Beattie Edmondson as a woman whose messy life gets messier when she inherits her nan’s badly behaved pug. A ten-minute American Gangster Special follows at 12:50pm, with Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott revisiting the making of their 2007 crime epic. Randolph Scott’s 1959 western Ride Lonesome takes the 1pm slot, and Rock Hudson and Doris Day’s Send Me No Flowers rounds off the afternoon at 2:30pm, before Harvey takes over at 4:35pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 line-up for tonight, Wednesday 26 August 2026, starting with the film that holds most of the 6pm hour before primetime even begins.

Harvey — Film4, 4:35pm

James Stewart’s 1950 comedy classic gets the pre-evening slot to itself, running right through to 6:45pm and taking the whole 6pm hour with it. Stewart plays a genial oddball whose best friend is a six-foot rabbit visible to nobody else, a source of mounting despair for his sister, played by Josephine Hull. It’s gentle, old-fashioned stuff, and a good deal funnier than the premise suggests.

Entrapment — Film4, 6:45pm

Sean Connery plays veteran art thief Robert “Mac” MacDougal in this 1999 heist thriller, matched scene for scene by Catherine Zeta-Jones, playing the investigator her firm sends to catch him. She ends up pulled into planning his next job rather than stopping it, and the film’s laser-dodging vault sequence is still the reason people remember it.

The G — Film4, 9pm

Dale Dickey heads this 2023 revenge thriller as a grandmother left with nothing after con artists strip her and her husband of their house and savings. Rather than accept it, she turns the tables on the people who did it, and Dickey plays the fallout with a steeliness that carries the film.

Memento — Film4, 11:10pm

Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough thriller closes the night, with Guy Pearce as a man hunting his wife’s killer despite a condition that stops him forming new memories. He works backwards through notes, photographs and tattoos he’s left himself, and the film famously tells its own story in reverse order. Still one of the best things Film4 puts out after 11pm.

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?

Harvey (1950), with James Stewart, runs from 4:35pm to 6:45pm, when Entrapment (1999), the Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones heist thriller, takes over. The G (2023), starring Dale Dickey, holds 9pm, and Memento (2000), Christopher Nolan’s thriller with Guy Pearce, follows at 11:10pm. 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 eleven entries across the full day and two of those are Teleshopping. Memento at 11:10pm is the pick if you can stay up for it: a genuinely clever piece of construction that still holds up a quarter of a century on. Entrapment at 6:45pm is the easier option for the whole household, a glossy old-fashioned heist picture built around its leads’ chemistry, and Harvey earlier in the evening is a gentle comedy if you’re home before 6pm and fancy something less demanding.

Watch

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