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

Published: 2 September 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, Thursday 3 September 2026, four films run back to back with no gaps: Canyon Passage (1946) opens the evening at 4:45pm, Charlotte Gray (2001), with Cate Blanchett, follows at 6:35pm, 12 Years a Slave (2013) takes the 9pm slot, and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) closes the night from 11:40pm.

Film4 Schedule: Thursday 3 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Thursday 3 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, nine slots across the full 24 hours once the long teleshopping block is folded in. The Missionary, Richard Loncraine’s 1982 comedy with Michael Palin as a hapless clergyman sent to reform London’s prostitutes and Maggie Smith as the aristocrat funding him, closes out the previous night at 12:55am and runs to 2:40am, when teleshopping takes over until 11am.

From there the day belongs to four films from the 1940s, shown straight through. Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944), with Tallulah Bankhead among a group of survivors adrift after a U-boat attack, opens at 11am. The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), John Wayne’s Ozark drama with Betty Field, follows at 12:55pm, then Guadalcanal Diary (1943), a Pacific-theatre war picture with Preston Foster and William Bendix, holds the mid-afternoon from 2:55pm before Canyon Passage (1946), the Dana Andrews western, opens the evening at 4:45pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Thursday 3 September 2026. Canyon Passage has already opened the evening at 4:45pm; from 6:35pm it’s three films with no breaks between them.

Charlotte Gray — Film4, 6:35pm

Cate Blanchett plays the title role in this 2001 Second World War drama, a Scottish wireless operator who parachutes into occupied France to search for her downed RAF lover and gets pulled into the Resistance instead. Billy Crudup and Michael Gambon co-star.

12 Years a Slave — Film4, 9pm

Steve McQueen’s 2013 film is the night’s main event. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free Black man living in New York in 1841 who is kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o co-star as a plantation owner and the woman he abuses, with Benedict Cumberbatch also featured. It won the Oscar for best picture, and Nyong’o took best supporting actress; two and a half hours, unflinching, and worth clearing the evening for.

Kingsman: The Secret Service — Film4, 11:40pm

Matthew Vaughn’s 2014 spy comedy closes the night. Colin Firth’s umbrella-wielding agent recruits Taron Egerton’s wayward teenager into a private intelligence outfit, with Samuel L. Jackson as a lisping tech billionaire bent on culling the world’s population.

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?

Canyon Passage (1946), Jacques Tourneur’s western with Dana Andrews, opens the evening at 4:45pm. Charlotte Gray (2001), with Cate Blanchett, follows at 6:35pm and runs into primetime. 12 Years a Slave (2013), Steve McQueen’s best-picture winner with Chiwetel Ejiofor, takes the 9pm slot, and Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), with Colin Firth and Taron Egerton, closes the night from 11:40pm. Full times for the rest of the day, including the run of 1940s films from Lifeboat (1944) at 11am, 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 an unusually strong line-up for a Thursday, four films running from mid-afternoon through to the small hours with no gaps between any of them. Canyon Passage is a solid, unshowy western to have on in the background. The evening proper is 12 Years a Slave, and it earns the space either side of it: McQueen’s film is one of the best things Film4 will show all year, not comfortable viewing but the kind of programming that justifies calling this channel’s schedule a cut above its commercial rivals. Charlotte Gray beforehand and Kingsman: The Secret Service after midnight are lighter company, a wartime drama and a knowingly silly spy romp bookending something much heavier in the middle.

Watch

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