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

Published: 31 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, Tuesday 1 September 2026, three films run back to back with no gaps: Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus opens the evening at 5:15pm, Michael Bay’s The Rock takes the 9pm slot, and Paddy Considine’s Journeyman closes the night from 11:45pm.

Film4 Schedule: Tuesday 1 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Tuesday 1 September 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

It’s a quiet day on Film4 by programme count, eight slots across the full 24 hours once the seven-hour teleshopping block is folded in. Alice Winocour’s Proxima, with Eva Green as an astronaut facing a year away from her young daughter, closes out the previous night at 1:50am and runs to 4am, when teleshopping takes over until 11am.

Mysterious Island, the 1961 Jules Verne adventure built around Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures, opens the day’s proper films at 11am. Spies in Disguise, the 2019 animated comedy pairing Will Smith’s disgraced super-spy with Tom Holland’s gadget-obsessed scientist, follows at 1:05pm, and Send Me No Flowers, the 1964 Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedy about a hypochondriac trying to arrange his own wife’s remarriage, holds the afternoon from 3:10pm until Spartacus opens the evening at 5:15pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 evening line-up for tonight, Tuesday 1 September 2026 — three films run end to end, with nothing splitting them up.

Spartacus — Film4, 5:15pm

Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 epic gets going nearly two hours before the watershed and runs until 9pm. Kirk Douglas leads the slave revolt against Rome, with Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons and Peter Ustinov filling out a cast that still holds up more than sixty years on — Ustinov won an Oscar for his turn as the scheming slave trader Batiatus. At close to four hours, it takes up most of the early evening on its own.

The Rock — Film4, 9pm

Michael Bay’s 1996 action film moves in at 9pm. Nicolas Cage’s FBI chemist and Sean Connery’s former SAS prisoner have to break into Alcatraz to stop Ed Harris’s rogue general from firing chemical weapons at San Francisco. It’s the loudest thing on the schedule tonight by some distance, and Connery gets some of his best one-liners of the decade out of it.

Journeyman — Film4, 11:45pm

Paddy Considine writes, directs and stars in this 2018 drama as a boxer whose life is upended by a brain injury sustained defending his world title. Jodie Whittaker plays his wife, left trying to rebuild a family around a husband who has to relearn who he is. It’s a harder, quieter film than the two before it, and a good reason to stay up past midnight.

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?

Spartacus (1960), Stanley Kubrick’s Roman epic with Kirk Douglas, holds the early evening for close to four hours from 5:15pm. The Rock (1996), Michael Bay’s Alcatraz thriller with Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery, follows at 9pm, and Journeyman (2018), Paddy Considine’s boxing drama with Jodie Whittaker, closes the night from 11:45pm. Full times for the rest of the day, including Mysterious Island (1961) and Spies in Disguise (2019) in the daytime, 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 leans older than usual, and it earns the slot: three films, no gaps, running from 5:15pm through to gone 1am. Spartacus gets the length it needs — Kubrick’s Roman epic hasn’t dated the way a lot of its contemporaries have. The Rock is the one most people will actually sit down for at 9pm, and Connery and Cage are still a good double act thirty years later. Journeyman closing the night is the smaller, tougher film of the three, and worth staying up for even if boxing dramas aren’t usually your thing.

Watch

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