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

Published: 22 August 2026

GREAT! TV is a free-to-air channel that lives on vintage British and American drama and sitcoms, and it sits at Freeview 34 with three sister channels for company. It has been through four names and one full closure since Sony launched it in 2011; Narrative Entertainment has run it since 2021.

Tonight, Sunday 23 August 2026, GREAT! TV clears its evening for just two films instead of its usual mix of drama and stripped sitcoms. The Horse Whisperer opens at 5:30pm and holds the schedule for three and a half hours, swallowing the 6pm, 7pm and 8pm hours in one go, before Rob Roy takes over at 9pm and runs past midnight. Each film pauses once for a short Good News on GREAT! bulletin, at 6:22pm and 9:45pm, before picking straight back up.

GREAT! TV Schedule: Sunday 23 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete GREAT! TV schedule for Sunday 23 August 2026, on Freeview 34.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

What’s on GREAT! TV today

Sunday opens overnight with a Robin’s Nest double bill just after midnight, then a single Rising Damp episode and two episodes of Air Rescue, each break marked by a short Good News on GREAT! Extra bulletin. Highway to Heaven doubles up from 3am, again split by a bulletin between its two episodes, before TJC’s teleshopping takes over from 5am to 8am.

A Fine Romance opens the daytime proper at 8am and hands over almost immediately to seven straight episodes of The Waltons, series seven running from episode seven to episode thirteen and occupying the schedule from 8:30am through to 3:30pm. Carry On Cabby fills most of what’s left of the afternoon, split by a Good News on GREAT! bulletin at 4:22pm, before The Horse Whisperer opens the evening at 5:30pm.

GREAT! TV tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the GREAT! TV primetime line-up for tonight, Sunday 23 August 2026. It’s a two-film night, and each one gets the whole of its slot bar a five-minute interruption.

The Horse Whisperer — GREAT! TV, 5:30pm

Robert Redford directs and stars in this 1998 drama as a Montana horse trainer drafted in to work with a teenager and her injured horse after a riding accident, with Kristin Scott Thomas as the girl’s mother and Sam Neill as her father. The film owns the whole early evening here, running from 5:30pm to 9pm and taking the 6pm, 7pm and 8pm hours with it; a Good News on GREAT! bulletin breaks in for five minutes at 6:22pm before the film picks back up.

Rob Roy — GREAT! TV, 9pm

Liam Neeson plays the 18th-century Scottish outlaw in Michael Caton-Jones’s 1995 telling, with John Hurt as the aristocrat who ruins him and Brian Cox as his scheming rival. It’s a rougher, more grounded take on the Highlands than the swashbuckling norm, and it fills the rest of the night, running from 9pm to just after midnight with another short Good News on GREAT! bulletin at 9:45pm.

What kind of shows are on GREAT! TV

American family drama and rural nostalgia

Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons and Highway to Heaven carry the daytime hours, and two of the three are largely Michael Landon’s doing. He starred in and directed much of Little House, and created Highway to Heaven outright. The register barely shifts between them: slow, sincere, usually ending on a lesson learned.

British classic drama and sitcom

The British side is thinner but sharper. Ballykissangel and Doctor Finlay handle the gentle end. Rising Damp handles the other, with Leonard Rossiter’s Rigsby prowling a shabby Yorkshire bedsit house being appalling about more or less everything.

Stripped US sitcoms and evening films

M*A*S*H is the one the channel leans on hardest, sometimes ten episodes deep in a single night. Films turn up most evenings (disaster pictures, old British comedies) and the seams get filled with Air Rescue and the short Good News on GREAT! bulletins.

How to watch GREAT! TV

Channel numbers

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

All four are free, with no subscription of any kind. Freesat is the exception: GREAT! TV was pulled from it on 7 February 2024 along with eight other Narrative Entertainment channels, and it has not come back since.

Streaming online

GREAT! TV streams free through Great! Player at great-player.com, no account or sign-in needed. The app is also available on Freeview Play, YouView, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung and LG smart TVs, plus dedicated apps on the App Store and Google Play. It carries content from GREAT! TV alongside GREAT! Movies and GREAT! Action, so you can browse the whole network from one place.

GREAT! sister channels

Four channels carry the GREAT! banner, all run by Narrative Entertainment UK Limited, and the split between them is straightforward enough.

A seasonal fifth, GREAT! Movies Christmas, runs festive films from September to December, and GREAT! Real joined the line-up in 2024 with unscripted programming. The year-round channels all share the free Great! Player service.

Frequently Asked Questions

What channel is GREAT! TV on Freeview?

GREAT! TV is on channel 34 on Freeview, free and with no subscription. It moved onto the COM6 multiplex in June 2023, which took its coverage to nearly every Freeview household.

What channel is GREAT! TV on Sky, Virgin Media and Freely?

GREAT! TV is on Sky channel 157, Virgin Media channel 170 and Freely channel 32, all free to watch. It has not returned to Freesat since being dropped in February 2024.

What’s on GREAT! TV tonight?

Tonight, Sunday 23 August 2026, it’s just two films. The Horse Whisperer runs from 5:30pm to 9pm, taking the 6pm, 7pm and 8pm hours in one block and pausing only for a five-minute Good News on GREAT! bulletin at 6:22pm. Rob Roy then takes over at 9pm, broken by another short bulletin at 9:45pm, and runs through to just after midnight.

Why does GREAT! TV show so much M*A*S*H?

Because 251 episodes across eleven seasons is enough to strip nightly for years without a viewer noticing the loop. The channel applies the same maths to Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons and Highway to Heaven during the day.

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

Yes, entirely free on Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and Freely, with no subscription. It is funded by advertising, which is also why the short Good News on GREAT! bulletins turn up between programmes.

Who owns GREAT! TV?

Narrative Entertainment UK Limited. It launched as Sony Entertainment Television in 2011, became Sony Channel in 2016, shut down in 2018, came back in 2019, and took the GREAT! TV name in May 2021 after Narrative Capital bought Sony’s UK free-to-air channels.

What are the GREAT! sister channels?

GREAT! TV sits alongside GREAT! Movies, GREAT! Action and GREAT! Romance, plus the seasonal GREAT! Movies Christmas and the unscripted GREAT! Real, which joined in 2024. All are owned by Narrative Entertainment and stream through the same free Great! Player app.

Can I watch GREAT! TV 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! TV knows precisely who is watching and rarely deviates from what keeps them there.

Sunday is unusually simple by GREAT! TV’s standards: seven episodes of The Waltons carry the middle of the day, then the whole evening goes to just two films. The Horse Whisperer and Rob Roy between them cover five and a half hours from 5:30pm to just after midnight, each interrupted only briefly for a Good News on GREAT! bulletin. It is a thinner night than the channel’s usual stripped-sitcom evenings, but two well-known films back to back is not a hard sell for the audience GREAT! TV is chasing.

Related: Freeview Channel Guide | Talking Pictures TV Guide | Films on TV This Week