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

Published: 18 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, Saturday 19 September 2026, the sci-fi thriller The Adjustment Bureau (2011), starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, opens at 6:55pm, and Mel Gibson’s historical epic Braveheart (1995) takes the whole of the rest of the evening from 9pm.

Film4 Schedule: Saturday 19 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Saturday 19 September 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

What’s on Film4 today

The overnight run opens with the 2020 horror-comedy Freaky at 1:45am, before a long teleshopping block takes the channel from 3:50am through to 11am.

The animated adventure Tad the Lost Explorer and the Curse of the Mummy (2022) opens the daytime run at 11am, followed by the festive comedy Christmas with the Kranks at 12:45pm. The classic comedy It Should Happen to You runs from 2:45pm, and Mrs Doubtfire carries the schedule through the rest of the afternoon, running into tonight’s line-up from 6:55pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Saturday 19 September 2026.

The Adjustment Bureau — Film4, 6:55pm

Matt Damon plays a rising New York politician who stumbles onto a shadowy group quietly steering the course of his life, and Emily Blunt is the dancer he’s not supposed to fall for. Released in 2011 and loosely built from a Philip K. Dick short story, it works better as a chase-and-romance thriller than as hard science fiction, and that’s fine.

Braveheart — Film4, 9pm

Mel Gibson directs and stars in this 1995 account of William Wallace’s revolt against English rule in medieval Scotland, a three-and-a-half-hour epic that swept the Oscars the following year including Best Picture and Best Director. History has picked plenty of holes in it since, but as big-screen spectacle it hasn’t dated much.

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?

The Adjustment Bureau (2011) opens the evening at 6:55pm, and Braveheart (1995) takes the 9pm slot for the rest of the night. Full times for the rest of the day, including Tad the Lost Explorer and the Curse of the Mummy 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 lighter two-film night than usual, but a solid one. The Adjustment Bureau at 6:55pm is a decent slice of romantic sci-fi, carried by its two leads more than its plotting. Braveheart at 9pm is the main event and the better film by some distance, a three-and-a-half-hour commitment that still justifies itself. Daytime keeps to the channel’s usual rotation of family animation, festive comedy and classic Hollywood, 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