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, Sunday 16 August 2026, it’s a modern action double followed by a vintage TV rerun: The Transporter Refueled opens primetime from 7:20pm, Big Kill takes over from 9:15pm, and a rerun of the 1960s Avengers spy series closes out the night from 11:50pm.

GREAT! Action Schedule: Sunday 16 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete GREAT! Action schedule for Sunday 16 August 2026, on Freeview 42.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on GREAT! Action today

Three vintage spy series open the day in a row: The Avengers at midnight, The New Avengers at 1am and The Persuaders! at 2am, all reruns from the archive. Absolute Zero, a 2006 disaster thriller with Jeff Fahey and Erika Eleniak about a polar shift that plunges the equator into a new ice age, follows at 3am. Coast Guard Alaska and two episodes of Air Rescue take the channel to 6am, when six half-hour Teleshopping blocks fill the schedule through to 9am.

Westerns carry most of the daytime. Wanted: Dead Or Alive, the bounty-hunter series that made Steve McQueen a star, opens the day proper at 9am, followed at 9:30am by War of the Wildcats, John Wayne’s 1943 film about a fight for an Oklahoma oil claim. Buck And The Preacher, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte’s 1972 western about a wagon train of formerly enslaved people fleeing bounty hunters, runs from 11:45am, breaking once for This Week Back Then. Jewel of the Nile, the 1985 sequel to Romancing The Stone with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito, takes the 2pm slot, and Captain From Castile, Tyrone Power’s 1947 adventure about a young officer fleeing the Spanish Inquisition to join Cortez’s expedition to Mexico, opens the early evening from 4:20pm, again breaking once mid-film before primetime.

GREAT! Action tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the GREAT! Action primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 16 August 2026.

The Transporter Refueled — GREAT! Action, 7:20pm

Ed Skrein steps into Jason Statham’s old role as Frank Martin for this 2015 instalment of the Transporter series. A job for a Russian crime boss turns into a trap set by a femme fatale and her three accomplices, and Martin spends most of the running time working out who is actually giving the orders. GREAT! Action breaks the film once for an 8:18pm This Week Back Then insert, picking up again at 8:23pm.

Big Kill — GREAT! Action, 9:15pm

Jason Patric and Danny Trejo lead a 2019 western set in a boom town that has run out of luck. A young man from Philadelphia falls in with two gamblers on the run and a preacher who turns out to be handier with a gun than a Bible, and the four of them get dragged toward the same reckoning. This one also splits for This Week Back Then, at 10:13pm, and resumes at 10:18pm.

The Avengers — GREAT! Action, 11:50pm

This isn’t the Marvel team, and it isn’t the 1998 Ralph Fiennes film either. It’s a rerun from the fifth, colour series of the 1960s spy show, with Patrick Macnee’s Steed acting so strangely that Emma Peel starts to suspect their own network has been infiltrated. It closes out the night’s schedule.

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?

Sunday evening on GREAT! Action is built around two films and a vintage TV rerun. The Transporter Refueled, Ed Skrein’s 2015 entry in the Transporter series, opens primetime from 7:20pm. Big Kill, the 2019 western with Jason Patric and Danny Trejo, takes over from 9:15pm. Both films break once for a five-minute This Week Back Then insert, and the night closes with a rerun of the 1960s Avengers spy series at 11:50pm, not the 1998 film of the same name. 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. Sunday’s daytime schedule is proper western and adventure territory: John Wayne in War of the Wildcats, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in Buck And The Preacher, and Tyrone Power in Captain From Castile carry the day between them, three decades of studio pictures back to back. The evening turns to two modern films instead.

Big Kill at 9:15pm is the newer of the two, a 2019 western that gives Jason Patric and Danny Trejo more to do than the channel’s older matinees usually allow. The Transporter Refueled earlier in the evening does the same trick of splitting around a five-minute nostalgia break, so anyone catching the start at 7:20pm should expect a short pause partway through rather than a clean run. The night then closes out with a rerun of the 1960s Avengers TV series rather than a third film.

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