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

Published: 21 August 2026

Legend is what the old Horror Channel turned into after its 2022 rebrand: still free to air, still fond of a monster, but now handing most of its evenings to sci-fi, fantasy and action cinema. Saturday opens overnight with a John Carpenter thriller, then runs a full day of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Gambler Returns before John Wayne’s McLintock! swallows the early evening whole. A Twilight Zone double bill leads into David Mamet’s Heist at 9pm, and Spike Lee’s Inside Man closes the night. Full breakdown below.

Legend Schedule: Saturday 22 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Legend schedule for Saturday 22 August 2026, on Freeview 41.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Legend today

Overnight belongs to two older genre pictures. Escape From New York opens at 1:25am, John Carpenter’s dystopian thriller sending Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken into a walled-off Manhattan to retrieve a kidnapped president. The Shed follows at 3:15am, a horror feature in the small-hours slot. Legend goes off air just before 5am and stays dark until 5:30am, then runs teleshopping until programmes resume at 7am with the first of five back-to-back episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, Lee Majors’s bionic agent Steve Austin running through series five, episodes eleven to fifteen, one an hour until 11am.

Just after midday, Legend hands two consecutive slots to The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw, the same series one opener at noon and again at 1:50pm, Kenny Rogers back as riverboat gambler Brady Hawkes. Law of the Lawless takes the schedule on at 3:40pm, an older western filling the run into early evening.

The afternoon closes out with the day’s single biggest block: John Wayne’s McLintock! starts at 5:25pm and does not let go until 8pm, taking the 6pm and 7pm hours outright. Maureen O’Hara plays his estranged wife in this 1963 comedy western built around a long-running feud between the two, and there is nothing else scheduled against it for two and a half hours.

Legend tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Legend primetime line-up for tonight, Saturday 22 August 2026.

McLintock! — Legend, 5:25pm

Legend’s evening effectively starts at 5:25pm, well ahead of the primetime watershed, when John Wayne’s 1963 comedy western McLintock! goes out and simply does not stop until 8pm. Wayne plays cattle baron G.W. McLintock, locked in a long, loud feud with the wife (Maureen O’Hara) who left him, and the film’s two and a half hours swallow the 6pm and 7pm slots whole. Anyone tuning in expecting something new at either hour will find the same film still running.

The Twilight Zone — Legend, 8pm and 8:30pm

McLintock! finally clears the schedule at 8pm for a back-to-back pair of episodes from Rod Serling’s original 1960s anthology, series three, episodes thirty-two and thirty-three. Two unrelated half-hour stories, one after the other, in the slot Legend gives the show most nights.

Heist — Legend, 9pm

David Mamet wrote and directed Heist (2001), and it shows in the dialogue: a veteran thief played by Gene Hackman plans one last job while his crew, including Delroy Lindo and Sam Rockwell, start to wonder whether they can trust each other, or him. It fills more than two hours, running through to the night’s final film at 11:15pm.

Inside Man — Legend, 11:15pm

Spike Lee closes the night with Inside Man (2006), a bank heist thriller that spends less time on the robbery itself than on the standoff afterwards. Denzel Washington’s detective and Clive Owen’s unflappable robber circle each other for two hours while Jodie Foster’s fixer works an angle of her own. A late finish, but a strong one to end the schedule on.

What kind of shows are on Legend

Cult horror and its Horror Channel roots

Horror hasn’t been dropped, just demoted. Amicus and Hammer-adjacent anthologies still turn up, along with independent chillers and oddities like Horror Express, though these days they land in the afternoon or after midnight rather than at 9pm.

Sci-fi, fantasy and action films

Most evenings belong to genre cinema of a specific vintage: Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, and further back, the fantasy adventures Ray Harryhausen animated. Film4 has the recent theatrical releases covered. Legend is working two or three decades earlier, and there is less competition for that ground than you would think.

Classic genre television

Very few channels still hand hours to vintage American genre TV. Legend does. The Twilight Zone runs as a nightly double bill, and Star Trek, Babylon 5 and The Six Million Dollar Man fill most weekday daytimes.

How to watch Legend

Channel numbers

Here’s where to find Legend across the main UK television platforms:

No subscription is required on any of them. Virgin Media and Freesat numbers can shift depending on your box and region, so trust your on-screen guide over this table if the two disagree.

Streaming online

Legend streams live and free through the WatchFreeUK app, available on Freeview Play, Freesat and YouView, and as a download on iOS, Android, Fire TV, Roku, and Samsung and LG smart TVs. No account or sign-up is required, which is more than can be said for most of its rivals. The catch-up section carries a selection of recently broadcast programmes, but licensing means not everything that airs stays available, and windows vary by title.

Legend Xtra and sister channels

Legend Xtra launched on 1 July 2022 as HorrorXtra and took its current name in a November 2023 refresh. Same broad mix of action, sci-fi and horror, free on Freeview channel 69, Sky 317, Virgin Media 171, Freesat 138 and Freely 51, with a +1 timeshift on Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat.

Both channels belong to the CBS AMC Networks UK Channels Partnership, a joint venture between Paramount Networks UK & Australia and AMC Networks International UK. True Crime and True Crime Xtra come from the same stable and sit alongside them in the WatchFreeUK app.

Frequently Asked Questions

What channel is Legend on Freeview?

Legend is on Freeview channel 41.

What’s on Legend tonight?

Tonight, Saturday 22 August 2026, John Wayne’s McLintock! (1963) runs from 5:25pm to 8pm, covering the 6pm and 7pm hours by itself. A Twilight Zone double bill follows at 8pm and 8:30pm, then Heist (2001), with Gene Hackman, takes the 9pm slot, before Inside Man (2006), starring Denzel Washington and Clive Owen, closes the night at 11:15pm.

Is Legend free to watch?

Yes, entirely. There are advert breaks during films and between programmes, but no subscription fee on any platform.

What was Legend called before?

It launched in 2004 as The Horror Channel, briefly became Zone Horror in 2006, reverted to Horror Channel in 2010, and became Legend on 30 June 2022.

Can I watch Legend online?

Yes, live and free through the WatchFreeUK app, no account needed.

Verdict

Legend is not chasing prestige and would look daft if it tried. What it gives instead is proper scheduled hours to material other free channels treat as filler. Horror Channel-era chillers hold the fringes of the schedule, but most nights now belong to the action cinema Van Damme and his contemporaries were making through the 1990s.

Saturday follows the same formula: Escape From New York overnight, five hours of The Six Million Dollar Man through the morning, then a John Wayne western given the run of the whole early evening before a Twilight Zone double and two proper crime thrillers carry the schedule to close. Nobody is pretending this is a discovery channel. It knows exactly what it is.

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