Which Films Does Freeview Show Most? We Counted 4,593 Showings in 76 Days

We know because we keep a record of every programme on 32 Freeview channels, every day. Over those 76 days we counted 4,593 film showings of 2,373 different films: about 60 films a day, and around 114 hours of them. Here is which films came round most often, which channels show the most, when films are on, and where the numbers are soft.

What film is shown most on Freeview?

Sixteen showings in 76 days is one every four or five days. Old westerns dominate the list, and nearly all of these showings are on one channel.

Ride in the Whirlwind is the 1966 western Jack Nicholson wrote and starred in, years before he was famous. Angel and the Badman is a 1947 John Wayne film. Predestination is a 2014 time-travel thriller starring Ethan Hawke, and 12 of its 16 showings started between 11pm and 6am.

Most of these films would never make a “best films on TV this week” list, and that is part of the point. A film shown 16 times is filling hours, not being scheduled as an event.

Which Freeview channel shows the most films?

GREAT! Movies. It showed 932 films in 76 days, about 20 hours of films a day, which is 84.3% of its airtime once shopping and continuity are left out.

The column to read is “showings per film”. GREAT! Movies filled its 932 showings from just 163 films. Of the 45 films shown ten times or more anywhere on Freeview, 44 were shown most often on GREAT! Movies. The other one was on its sister channel, GREAT! Action. Across the top 20 films, 254 of their 289 showings (87.9%) were on GREAT! Movies.

GREAT! Romance is second on volume, but since 26 August that slot has been GREAT! Christmas, and most of its films have been Christmas TV films. We counted those separately in When does Christmas TV start?.

Film4 is the purest film channel on Freeview: 98.2% of its airtime outside shopping and closedown was films. It repeats more than the archive channels but far less than GREAT! Movies. Its most-shown film, Hidden Figures, was on six times.

Which Freeview channel has the widest choice of films?

Talking Pictures TV, by a long way. It showed 596 different films in 76 days, from 647 showings. That is 1.09 showings per film, so if you catch a film there you are unlikely to see it again within a couple of months. Its most-shown film, Albert R.N., was on three times.

Legend is second, with 422 different films from 523 showings, and Film4 third with 355.

Across Freeview as a whole, 1,391 of the 2,373 films (58.6%) were shown exactly once in the 76 days. The repetition is concentrated, not general: a few hundred films on two channels do most of it.

We found the same pattern when we counted repeats across all programmes. Film4 and Talking Pictures TV were the two least repetitive channels on Freeview.

How many films do BBC One, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 show?

Far fewer than the film channels. Together, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 showed 338 films in 76 days, about 31 a week and 7.4% of all the film showings we counted.

The BBC channels and Channel 4 showed every film once.

ITV1 is the exception, and the reason is James Bond. It showed 15 different Bond films with 29 showings between them, from The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) to No Time to Die (2021), plus the unofficial Never Say Never Again. That is 29 of ITV1’s 59 film showings in the period, so about half of all the films ITV1 showed were Bond films.

What time are films on TV?

The busiest single hour is 9pm to 10pm: 540 of the 4,593 film showings (11.8%) started then. Across the day it splits like this:

Afternoon is the biggest block, because GREAT! Movies, GREAT! Christmas, Talking Pictures TV and Legend all run films back to back through the day.

The most repeated films are kept out of the evening. Of the 564 showings of films aired ten times or more, only 17.0% started between 6pm and 11pm, and 39.0% started between 11pm and 6am. For films shown once or twice the evening share is 25.8%. A channel saves its evening for something it hasn’t shown lately and runs the familiar ones overnight and in the morning.

For what’s on tonight, our films on TV page lists every film on Freeview, rebuilt every morning.

How did we count the films?

The data comes from our own schedule archive: full-day listings for all 32 main Freeview channels, taken from the Freeview XMLTV feed every day and stored as structured records. The window is 2 August to 16 October 2026, which is 76 days and 65,496 listing rows.

The feed does not say what is a film. Almost the only channels that label their films as films are Film4 and GREAT! Romance. GREAT! Movies, Legend and Talking Pictures TV label them as “Entertainment”, the same as everything else. So we classed a programme as a film when all of these were true:

• its usual slot is at least 70 minutes long;
• no showing of that title is listed with a series or episode number, which is what separates a film from a feature-length drama like Midsomer Murders;
• it isn’t news, sport, shopping, a magazine show or a “Part 1 / Part 2” miniseries;
• on channels that are not film channels, it doesn’t read as a documentary, concert or clip show.

Two checks on that rule. Film4 does label its own films, and the rule picked up 575 of Film4’s 579 labelled films of 70 minutes or more (99.3%). The rule’s output was also read title by title for every channel that isn’t a film channel, plus a random sample of 40 titles from all channels; 60 titles were taken out by name: documentaries, concerts, clip shows, sport, channel fillers, and a handful we could not confirm were films. All 40 in the random sample were films.

One showing, not two. Some channels list a film in two halves around a five-minute news bulletin. 5Action lists Rio Lobo that way, and more than half of GREAT! Romance’s film showings (410 of 752) were split like this. We join the halves back into one showing (1,668 listing rows were joined like this). If you count raw listing rows instead, those films look as if they were on twice as often.

Five limits, stated plainly:

• Counts are approximate. A classifier is never perfect. Films in slots under 70 minutes, such as some short 1940s and 1950s films on Talking Pictures TV, are missed. A documentary we didn’t spot could still be in. The top-30 list was checked separately: each title there has one consistent running time, so each is one film.
• Same title, same film. Titles are matched after tidying capitals and punctuation. Two different films with the same name would be counted as one. None of the top 30 have this problem as far as we can tell, but further down the list it is possible.
• A schedule, not a log of what went out. Last-minute changes on the night aren’t captured.
• Hours are slot hours, adverts included.
• Only the 32 main Freeview channels. No +1 channels, so nothing is counted twice. No Sky Cinema (it has its own guide), no streaming. There is no “more than last year” claim, because our archive starts on 2 August 2026.

This study was produced with automated tools. A script classifies and counts the films, and an AI assistant worked through its output to remove the false positives listed above. A human editor spot-checks the results, but not every title has been checked by hand.

Download the data

Both files are free to use, including commercially, with credit to TV Radar and a link to this page.

• Every film, with its showings (CSV): one row for each of the 2,373 films, with the number of showings, which channels showed it, slot hours, first and last showing, and its most common time of day.
• Films by channel (CSV): one row per channel, with film showings, different films, hours, share of airtime and its most-shown film.

The chart at the top of the page is free to embed or reuse on the same terms.

To cite it: Source: TV Radar analysis of Freeview listings, 2 August to 16 October 2026 (tvradar.uk/most-shown-films-on-freeview).

Want a cut we haven’t published, such as one channel or one genre? The contact page reaches us.

Frequently asked questions

What film is shown most on Freeview?

Between 2 August and 16 October 2026 it was Ride in the Whirlwind, with 17 showings across GREAT! Movies, Legend, GREAT! Action and Talking Pictures TV. Four films were shown 16 times: A Murderer Upstairs, Death Rides a Horse, Predestination and The Quick and the Dead. All five were shown mostly on GREAT! Movies.

Which Freeview channel shows the most films?

GREAT! Movies, with 932 film showings in 76 days, about 20 hours of films a day. It also repeats them most: 163 different films made up those 932 showings, an average of 5.7 showings each. Of the 45 films shown ten times or more on Freeview, 44 were shown most often on GREAT! Movies.

Which Freeview channel has the widest choice of films?

Talking Pictures TV. It showed 596 different films in 76 days from 647 showings, so almost every film it shows is on only once. Legend was second with 422 different films and Film4 third with 355.

How many films are on free TV each day?

About 60. We counted 4,593 film showings across 32 Freeview channels in 76 days, an average of 60.4 a day and around 114 hours of films a day in total. Most of them are on the dedicated film channels. BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 together showed 338, which is 7.4% of the total.

What time are films usually on TV?

The single busiest hour is 9pm to 10pm, when 540 of the 4,593 film showings started. Just over a quarter (26.6%) started between 11pm and 6am. Films that are repeated a lot are pushed away from the evening: of the showings of films aired ten times or more, only 17.0% started between 6pm and 11pm.

How many James Bond films did ITV1 show?

Fifteen different Bond films between 2 August and 16 October 2026, with 29 showings between them. That is 29 of ITV1’s 59 film showings in that period, so roughly half of all the films ITV1 showed were Bond films.

Are films on free TV getting more repetitive?

This study cannot say. It covers one 76-day window in 2026, so there is nothing to compare it with. A trend needs at least two comparable windows, and we would rather publish a number we can stand behind than a direction we cannot.

Where can I see which films are on Freeview tonight?

Our films on TV page lists every film on Freeview, rebuilt every morning.