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

GREAT! Romance is the UK’s free-to-air home for Hallmark-style romance films, tucked away on Freeview 52. Narrative Entertainment picked it up in 2021 along with the rest of Sony Pictures Television’s old UK free-to-air stable, ran it for a while as GREAT! Movies Classic, then switched it to romance and nothing else in January 2023. Tonight, Wednesday 5 August 2026, renovation romcom The Wedding Cottage (2023) runs from 7:50pm around a short news break, with 2014’s Bridal Wave following from 9:45pm and A Pinch of Portugal closing the night from 11:40pm.

GREAT! Romance Schedule: Wednesday 5 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete GREAT! Romance schedule for Wednesday 5 August 2026, on Freeview 52.

What’s on GREAT! Romance today

Daytime runs on the same pattern as the evening: films split either side of a short “Good News on GREAT!” bulletin. Mix Up in the Mediterranean opens the day’s proper run at 8:10am, with Jeremy Jordan playing twin chefs, a small-town cook and a married big-city rival, who swap places for a cooking contest and complicate more than just the menu. It breaks at 9:05am and resumes at 9:10am through to 10:05am.

Love’s Last Resort takes over at 10:15am, Alix Angelis as a woman who ditches an immature boyfriend hoping he’ll grow up, only to find him getting married at the same resort where she’s holidaying six months later. That pauses at 11:10am and picks up again at 11:15am until 12:10pm. Summer In The Vineyard follows from 12:10pm, with pressure building on Nate and Frankie ahead of their first Taste of St. Madeleine event, breaking at 1:05pm and resuming at 1:10pm until 2pm.

Autumn In The Vineyard runs from 2pm to 3:50pm around a 2:55pm bulletin, Rachael Leigh Cook among two former high school sweethearts who inherit the same vineyard through a mix-up. Vote One for Love takes the late-afternoon slot from 3:50pm, Natasha Wilson and Jesse Hutch in a political strategist’s return to her hometown to help a mayoral candidate, pausing at 4:45pm and resuming at 4:50pm until 5:50pm, when The Engagement Dress opens the evening run.

GREAT! Romance tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the GREAT! Romance primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 5 August 2026.

The Engagement Dress — GREAT! Romance, 5:50pm

Angel Prater plays Claudia, whose friends keep getting engaged after wearing a particular bridesmaid’s dress. When the streak fails to work for her, she has to work out what the dress was actually telling her. It breaks for a Good News on GREAT! bulletin at 6:45pm and resumes at 6:50pm, running through to 7:50pm.

The Wedding Cottage — GREAT! Romance, 7:50pm

Erin Krakow and Brendan Penny lead this renovation romcom from 2023. Krakow’s Vanessa has promised a contest-winning couple their dream wedding, but the venue, and its owner, need considerably more work than the deadline allows. The film pauses at 8:45pm for a five-minute news bulletin and picks back up at 8:50pm until 9:45pm.

Bridal Wave — GREAT! Romance, 9:45pm

Arielle Kebbel stars as Georgie, whose wedding planning derails when she starts falling for a stranger she meets along the way. This one dates back to 2014. It breaks at 10:40pm for Good News on GREAT! and resumes at 10:45pm through to 11:40pm.

A Pinch of Portugal — GREAT! Romance, 11:40pm

A 2023 culinary romance closes out the night. Heather Hemmens plays Anna, a prep cook thrust into the lead role when a celebrity chef walks off his own television show, with Luke Mitchell opposite her as things get complicated on and off camera.

What kind of films are on GREAT! Romance

Made-for-TV romance and Hallmark-style movies

Most of the schedule is exactly what the name promises: romantic comedies and dramas made for television rather than cinema, a great many of them produced for the American Hallmark and Lifetime markets and licensed over here afterwards. Cake shops, small-town festivals, mistaken identities, matchmakers who fall for their own clients. That repetition is the appeal rather than a flaw. Nobody switching on at three on a weekday afternoon wants to be surprised.

Christmas and seasonal takeovers

From October through to early January the channel goes almost entirely festive, with some titles shared with the network’s seasonal GREAT! Christmas strand. The rest of the year defaults to spring and summer settings, weddings and plots that require somebody to get on a plane.

Faith-based and heavier drama

A handful of the films are more serious than the rest, often adapted from novels or true stories, and willing to sit with grief or faith rather than hurry past it. Same genre, heavier going.

How to watch GREAT! Romance

Channel numbers

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

All of the above are free, with no subscription required. Freesat is the gap: the whole GREAT! network was withdrawn from that platform in 2024, so Freesat viewers need Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media or the Great! Player app instead. Virgin Media numbers shift slightly by region, so trust your on-screen guide over ours if the two disagree.

Streaming online

GREAT! Romance streams free through the Great! Player app, available on iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung and LG smart TVs, and at great-player.com. There is no account to create and no sign-up form to fill in. You open the app and the channel is there, paid for by ad breaks rather than by you, which is rarer among UK streaming apps than it ought to be.

GREAT! sister channels

Four channels sit under the GREAT! banner, all free-to-air, all inherited from the Sony Pictures Television UK portfolio Narrative Entertainment bought in 2021.

• GREAT! TV (Freeview 34): general entertainment, classic sitcoms and drama repeats
• GREAT! Movies (Freeview 50): films across every genre, not just romance
• GREAT! Action (Freeview 42): action, adventure and war films

A fifth, GREAT! Christmas, borrows part of the network’s schedule each winter and hands it back in the new year.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s on GREAT! Romance tonight?

Romance films run back to back through the evening, headed by The Wedding Cottage from 7:50pm and Bridal Wave from 9:45pm. The Engagement Dress opens the run from 5:50pm and A Pinch of Portugal closes it from 11:40pm. Full times are in the schedule table above.

What channel is GREAT! Romance on?

Freeview channel 52, Sky channel 319, and Virgin Media channel 424. It’s currently unavailable through Freesat’s official channel line-up.

Is GREAT! Romance free to watch?

Yes, entirely free to air with no subscription, on Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and through the Great! Player app. There are ad breaks during films, as with any commercially funded channel.

Can I watch GREAT! Romance online for free?

Yes, via the Great! Player app or great-player.com, with no account or sign-up needed.

Verdict

GREAT! Romance does one job and does it consistently: comfort viewing with guaranteed happy endings, and enough turnover that regulars rarely see the same film twice in a fortnight. It will never trouble anyone after ambitious television. Watch two in a row and the tics start to show. The cake shops. The small towns forever in need of saving. The third-act misunderstanding that one honest conversation would have cleared up in a minute.

Tonight is formula throughout. The Wedding Cottage gets the better slot and the better-known cast, with Erin Krakow and Brendan Penny carrying a fairly thin renovation plot further than it really needs; Bridal Wave is a decade old now, and it shows in the pacing rather than the premise.

Related: Film4 TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide