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

Published: 20 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, Monday 21 September 2026, Hidden Figures (2016), Theodore Melfi’s NASA drama with Taraji P. Henson in the lead role, opens the evening at 6:20pm, and Miranda’s Victim (2023), starring Abigail Breslin, airs at 9pm after a short interview special about The Theory of Everything at 8:50pm.

Film4 Schedule: Monday 21 September 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Monday 21 September 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

Overnight, the survival thriller Songbird opens the day at 1:30am, then a long teleshopping block holds the channel from 3:10am through to 8am. A brief sign-language slot, LumoTV: Sign2Win, airs at 8am, ahead of another teleshopping run carrying into late morning.

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), Charles Jarrott’s historical drama with Richard Burton as Henry VIII and Geneviève Bujold as Anne Boleyn, opens the daytime film schedule at 11am. A short Theory of Everything interview special airs just before 2pm, then the 1956 western The Last Wagon, starring Richard Widmark, and the 1949 Olivia de Havilland drama The Heiress carry the afternoon through to early evening.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Monday 21 September 2026.

Hidden Figures — Film4, 6:20pm

Theodore Melfi’s 2016 drama follows the three Black women mathematicians at NASA, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, whose calculations helped put John Glenn into orbit while the agency itself lagged badly on civil rights. Henson leads, with Spencer and Monáe alongside her.

The Theory of Everything: Interview Special — Film4, 8:50pm

A short companion piece ahead of the main film. Redmayne and Jones sit down with director James Marsh to talk through the making of their Stephen Hawking biopic, rather than repeating the feature itself.

Miranda’s Victim — Film4, 9pm

Abigail Breslin stars in this 2023 drama about the real assault survivor whose case gave rise to the Miranda warning read out at every US arrest since. Ryan Phillippe and Luke Wilson also feature.

The Little Stranger — Film4, 11:35pm

Lenny Abrahamson’s 2018 gothic drama, adapted from Sarah Waters’ novel, sends Domhnall Gleeson’s doctor back to the crumbling manor house his mother once worked in. Ruth Wilson and Charlotte Rampling co-star, closing out the night.

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?

Hidden Figures (2016) opens the evening at 6:20pm, and Miranda’s Victim (2023) takes the 9pm slot, sitting just after a short interview special about The Theory of Everything at 8:50pm. The Little Stranger (2018) closes out the night from 11:35pm. Full times for the rest of the day, including Anne of the Thousand Days 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 leans on genuine substance rather than spectacle. Hidden Figures at 6:20pm still holds up as one of the more purposeful mainstream biopics of the last decade, and Henson, Spencer and Monáe carry it well past awards-season formula. Miranda’s Victim at 9pm is a smaller, sharper piece of work, with Breslin doing more with a difficult true story than the marketing around it suggested at the time. The short interview special ahead of it at 8:50pm is worth a look if you missed The Theory of Everything itself. The Little Stranger closing out from 11:35pm is a slow-burn gothic piece that rewards patience more than most late-night scheduling gets from viewers. Daytime is a proper classic-film day: a 1969 historical epic in Anne of the Thousand Days, a taut 1956 western in The Last Wagon, and William Wyler’s The Heiress from 1949 taking the mid-afternoon.

Watch

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