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 as part of Sony Pictures Television’s old UK free-to-air portfolio, ran it for a couple of years as GREAT! Movies Classic, then switched it to romance only in January 2023. Tonight’s four primetime films begin from 5:55pm, and the channel’s usual pattern holds: each title gets a short “Good News on GREAT!” bulletin partway through, followed by an immediate repeat play before the next film starts.

GREAT! Romance Schedule: Thursday 13 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete GREAT! Romance schedule for Thursday 13 August 2026, on Freeview 52.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on GREAT! Romance today

Daytime keeps to the same rhythm as the evening: a film plays, a short “Good News on GREAT!” bulletin interrupts it partway through, then the film picks back up before the next title starts. Can’t Buy My Love opens the day’s proper run at 8:10am, Adelaide Kane and Ben Hollingsworth in the story of a wealthy playboy trying to win over a hardworking EMT who has no interest in his father’s money.

Fashionably in Love takes over at 10:05am, Celeste Desjardins as a socialite secretly chasing a career in fashion design who strikes an image-rehab deal with Andrew Bushell’s notorious playboy. Date with Love follows from 12:05pm, then To England With Love runs from 2pm.

Caribbean Summer closes out the afternoon from 4pm, running through to 5:55pm when Aloha with Love opens tonight’s films.

GREAT! Romance tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the GREAT! Romance primetime line-up for tonight, Thursday 13 August 2026.

Aloha with Love — GREAT! Romance, 5:55pm

Tiffany Smith plays an LA architect who heads home to Hawaii to sort out her late aunt’s estate and finds Trevor Donovan’s character already there. Brian Bird, co-creator of When Calls the Heart, produced it, and it was shot on location on Maui.

When Love Springs — GREAT! Romance, 7:50pm

Rhiannon Fish’s PR professional invents a relationship with James William O’Halloran’s character purely to keep an old boyfriend at a distance, a plan that goes about as smoothly as these plans ever do.

A Splash of Love — GREAT! Romance, 9:45pm

Fish returns for a second role tonight, this time as a marine biology researcher who travels to the Pacific Northwest to study orcas and ends up spending most of her time with Benjamin Hollingsworth’s whale-watching guide instead.

Two for the Win — GREAT! Romance, 11:40pm

Trevor Donovan’s champion skier comes home to prepare for the biggest race of his career and crosses paths with Charlotte Sullivan’s character, a childhood friend turned local ski instructor. It closes out the night from 11:40pm.

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. Aloha with Love opens the run at 5:55pm, When Love Springs follows at 7:50pm, A Splash of Love at 9:45pm, and Two for the Win closes the night at 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 looking for 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 leans on the going-home trope rather than the small-town-secret plots that turn up most other nights. Aloha with Love and Two for the Win both send their leads back to a place they grew up or once knew well, one to sort out a family estate, the other to chase a title. When Love Springs runs the fake-relationship route instead, and A Splash of Love is the outlier: a workplace-adjacent pairing built around whale research rather than a wedding, family business or homecoming, and it’s the one worth catching if only one slot fits.

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