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

Published: 17 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, Friday 18 September 2026, the 1968 war film Anzio, starring Robert Mitchum, opens at 6:40pm. Tom Cruise returns to the cockpit for the 2022 blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick at 9pm, and the night closes with the 2020 prison-break drama Escape from Pretoria, starring Daniel Radcliffe, from 11:35pm.

Film4 Schedule: Friday 18 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Friday 18 September 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

The overnight run opens with the 2018 thriller Peppermint at 1:45am, before a long teleshopping block takes the channel from 3:50am through to 11am.

Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt opens the daytime run at 11am, followed by the western Siege at Red River in the early afternoon. The Irish drama Dancing at Lughnasa and the swashbuckling The Mark of Zorro carry the schedule through the rest of the afternoon, running into tonight’s line-up from 6:40pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Friday 18 September 2026.

Anzio — Film4, 6:40pm

Anzio (1968) opens the evening, an old-fashioned war picture with Robert Mitchum leading a large ensemble through the Allied landings south of Rome. It’s a relic of a particular style of star-heavy war epic that studios don’t really make any more.

Top Gun: Maverick — Film4, 9pm

Tom Cruise’s 2022 sequel fills the 9pm hour, and it’s easily the best thing on the channel tonight: a legacy sequel that earned its huge box office rather than just trading on nostalgia, with aerial sequences that hold up on a small screen almost as well as they did in a cinema.

Escape from Pretoria — Film4, 11:35pm

Daniel Radcliffe stars in this 2020 drama, based on the true story of political prisoners breaking out of a South African jail during apartheid. A solid, tense pick for the late slot rather than a big swing.

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.

Film4 is the least repetitive channel on Freeview by a wide margin. When we logged 48 days of schedules across all 32 main channels, only 36.3 per cent of Film4’s slots were a title it had already shown, against 87.9 per cent across Freeview as a whole — the difference being that films are scheduled once or twice rather than stripped across the week. The full comparison is in our study of repeats on UK television.

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?

Anzio opens the evening at 6:40pm, Top Gun: Maverick takes the 9pm slot, and Escape from Pretoria closes the night from 11:35pm. Full times for the rest of the day, including Shadow of a Doubt at 11am and the run of afternoon films, 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 straightforward three-film night, and a strong one. Anzio at 6:40pm is watchable rather than essential, an old-school war epic that’s more about the cast list than the storytelling. The main event is Top Gun: Maverick at 9pm, comfortably the best film on any channel tonight and one that rewards a second or third viewing more than most modern blockbusters manage. Escape from Pretoria closing from 11:35pm is a solid choice for the late slot, tense without overreaching. Daytime keeps to the channel’s usual rotation of classic drama and mid-century adventure, none of it built to be a centrepiece on its own.

Watch

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