GREAT! Action TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On GREAT! Action Tonight

GREAT! Action is a free-to-air film channel on Freeview 42, built around action films and westerns. It started out as Sony Movies Action on 10 September 2019 and has been renamed twice since, most recently in March 2023. Tonight, Saturday 15 August 2026, it’s an eighties adventure and two studio pictures: Romancing The Stone finishes its run from 5:43pm, The Double takes over at 7pm, and Kingdom Of Heaven closes out primetime from 9pm.

GREAT! Action Schedule: Saturday 15 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete GREAT! Action schedule for Saturday 15 August 2026, on Freeview 42.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on GREAT! Action today

Three episodes of Air Rescue close out the overnight hours before six half-hour Teleshopping blocks take the channel from 6am to 9am. Murder Maps opens the day proper at 9am with a series two case built around a killer stalking blacked-out wartime London during the Blitz.

Westerns carry the rest of the daytime. The Proud Rebel, Alan Ladd’s 1958 film about a father whose wife has been killed and son left mute by the shock, hunting for both a cure and a reckoning, runs from 10am, breaking once for This Week Back Then. Went The Day Well?, the 1942 wartime thriller with Leslie Banks in which a sleepy English village turns the tables on Nazi infiltrators, follows at 12:15pm. Two Rode Together, James Stewart’s 1961 western pairing a cynical sheriff with an army officer on a rescue mission into hostile territory, closes out the afternoon from 2:20pm, again breaking once mid-film, before Romancing The Stone opens the evening’s run of films at 4:40pm.

GREAT! Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the GREAT! Action primetime line-up for tonight, Saturday 15 August 2026.

Romancing The Stone — GREAT! Action, 5:43pm

Kathleen Turner’s mousy romance novelist gets pulled into her own kind of plot once her sister is kidnapped in Colombia, and Michael Douglas turns up as the mercenary who won’t let her go it alone. Danny DeVito trails the pair of them, chasing the same map for himself. The 1984 adventure has been running since 4:40pm and pauses again for This Week Back Then at 5:38pm before finishing from 5:43pm.

The Double — GREAT! Action, 7pm

Richard Gere plays a retired CIA man dragged back in to help run down a Cold War assassin still active decades later, teamed with a younger FBI agent who starts to doubt his own partner along the way. Martin Sheen fills out the cast. The 2011 thriller splits either side of a 7:56pm This Week Back Then break, resuming at 8:01pm.

Kingdom Of Heaven — GREAT! Action, 9pm

Orlando Bloom plays a blacksmith swept from a French village to the walls of Jerusalem after tragedy strips away everything he had at home, with Eva Green, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson filling out the crusader epic around him. Tonight’s biggest film breaks once more for This Week Back Then at 9:56pm and resumes at 10:01pm to close out the night.

What kind of films are on GREAT! Action

Classic westerns and action icons

The channel advertises itself as the home of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, and for once the marketing is accurate. Westerns from the 1930s to the 1960s take up most of the daylight hours, series as well as films, with Tombstone Territory and The High Chaparral in heavy rotation. After that come the 1980s and ’90s action vehicles, built around a small and very dependable cast list.

Contemporary action and thrillers

Evenings go harder on star names, usually one bigger studio picture with a leaner independent thriller either side of it. Most had a cinema release before they arrived here.

Anime, rescue documentaries and reality strands

Since around August 2024 the overnight hours have gone to things that are not films at all: Dragon Ball Super, and rescue documentaries such as Coast Guard Alaska and Air Rescue. The evening slots have so far been left alone.

How to watch GREAT! Action

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find GREAT! Action across the main UK television platforms:

Freesat viewers lost it in early February 2024, along with eight other Narrative Entertainment channels, and it has not come back.

Streaming online

GREAT! Action streams free through Great! Player at great-player.com, with no account or sign-in. The app is on Freeview Play, YouView, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung and LG smart TVs, plus the App Store and Google Play. GREAT! Movies and GREAT! TV sit in the same app, so the whole network is in one place.

GREAT! sister channels

GREAT! Action is one of four channels run by Narrative Entertainment UK Limited under the GREAT! banner.

A fifth channel, GREAT! Movies Christmas, appears seasonally and runs festive films from September to December.

Frequently Asked Questions

What channel is GREAT! Action on Freeview?

GREAT! Action is on channel 42 on Freeview. It’s not currently on Freesat, having been withdrawn from that platform in early February 2024 along with eight other Narrative Entertainment channels. It remains free on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media.

What channel is GREAT! Action on Sky and Virgin Media?

Channel 323 on Sky, channel 426 on Virgin Media. Both carry the same schedule as Freeview 42 and both are free to watch.

What’s on GREAT! Action tonight?

Saturday evening on GREAT! Action is built around three films. Romancing The Stone, the 1984 adventure with Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito, finishes its run from 5:43pm. The Double, Richard Gere’s 2011 Cold War thriller, takes over at 7pm, and Kingdom Of Heaven, the crusader epic with Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson, closes out primetime from 9pm. The Double and Kingdom Of Heaven each break once for a five-minute This Week Back Then insert. See the schedule table above for the rest of the day.

Is GREAT! Action free to watch, and does it carry adverts?

Yes, entirely free on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media, with no subscription. It carries advertising during films, which is why some titles run in two parts around a short interstitial such as This Week Back Then.

Who owns GREAT! Action?

Narrative Entertainment UK Limited. The channel launched in September 2019 as Sony Movies Action, was rebranded Great! Movies Action in 2021 after Narrative Capital’s acquisition of Sony’s UK channels, and became GREAT! Action in March 2023.

What are the GREAT! sister channels?

GREAT! Movies, GREAT! TV and GREAT! Romance, plus the seasonal GREAT! Movies Christmas. All stream free via Great! Player.

Can I watch GREAT! Action online for free?

Yes, through Great! Player at great-player.com, with apps on Freeview Play, YouView, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung and LG smart TVs. No account is needed.

Verdict

GREAT! Action costs nothing to watch and needs no sign-up. Saturday’s daytime schedule is proper western territory: Alan Ladd in The Proud Rebel, the wartime thriller Went The Day Well? and James Stewart in Two Rode Together carry the afternoon between them, a solid stretch for anyone who likes their films in black and white. The evening turns to three studio pictures instead.

Kingdom Of Heaven at 9pm is the biggest of the three, its crusader epic giving Orlando Bloom the most screen time he gets on the channel all week. Romancing The Stone and The Double earlier in the evening both do the same trick of splitting around a five-minute nostalgia break, so anyone catching the start at 4:40pm or 7pm should expect a short pause partway through rather than a clean run.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Films on TV This Week