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

Yesterday is UKTV’s history and heritage channel, mixing archive documentaries, military history and natural history with a growing slate of classic motoring shows. BBC Studios has owned it outright through UKTV since 2019, and it’s free with no subscription required. Friday’s evening opens with Antiques Roadshow and A Perfect Planet before a Canal Boat Diaries double at 8pm and 9pm, then two Bangers & Cash repeats from earlier in the afternoon close out the night.

Yesterday Schedule: Friday 14 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Yesterday schedule for Friday 14 August 2026, on Freeview 27.

Overnight

Breakfast

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Yesterday today

The overnight run opens with a Bangers & Cash: Restoring Classics repeat at midnight, built around a rare Reliant Scimitar GTC recommission, followed by Find It, Fix It, Flog It at 1am and an Abandoned Engineering look at a Brazilian island complex at 2am, before Teleshopping takes over for just over three hours from 3am.

Two more Abandoned Engineering episodes follow from 6:10am, one on a former Seoul prison linked to a South Korean independence legend, the other on a Florida city hall that started as one man’s grand vision, ahead of a Bangers & Cash: Restoring Classics double covering a Ford Mondeo quick flip and a long-running MG project. Great War Stories and The World at War, narrated by Laurence Olivier, share the late-morning slots from 10am, then repeat again at 4pm and 5pm.

The middle of the day belongs to Antiques Roadshow, with a different edition screened at midday (Gregynog Hall in Powys) and again at 1pm (the Royal Marines Museum in Southsea), followed by two runs of Bangers & Cash. The evening reuses some of this: the 6pm Antiques Roadshow is the same Gregynog Hall edition shown at midday, and the 10pm and 11pm Bangers & Cash episodes are the two that already ran that afternoon.

Yesterday tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Yesterday primetime line-up for tonight, Friday 14 August 2026.

Antiques Roadshow — Yesterday, 6pm

Fiona Bruce’s visit to Gregynog Hall near Newtown gets a second outing tonight, having already screened at lunchtime. Wartime escape plans sketched by a prisoner of war are among the items brought in, alongside a piece created in memory of race-riot victims.

A Perfect Planet — Yesterday, 7pm

David Attenborough turns the focus onto people for this instalment, tracing how rising carbon dioxide is tipping ecosystems out of balance. It’s a harder-edged episode than the series’ earlier looks at weather and wildlife.

Canal Boat Diaries — Yesterday, 8pm

Robbie’s route along the Macclesfield Canal takes an unplanned turn when a narrowboat slips its moorings and has to be chased down. He also stops near Congleton to look over a shipwreck that has somehow ended up for sale.

Canal Boat Diaries — Yesterday, 9pm

Fallen trees force a change of plan on the stretch of the Peak Forest Canal towards Manchester. Along the way Robbie runs into broadcaster Terry Christian, whose father spent years working on a nearby waterway.

Bangers & Cash — Yesterday, 10pm

This is a repeat of the 2pm episode, in which Derek Mathewson looks over a Citroen 2CV before getting distracted by a garage hiding more than 270 motorbikes.

Bangers & Cash — Yesterday, 11pm

The second afternoon repeat closes out the night, with Derek collecting a batch of vintage motorcycles from a garden garage in the North East. A quiet finish to a schedule built largely around reruns today.

What kind of shows are on Yesterday

Classic motoring and Bangers & Cash

Motoring is the growth area, and it is essentially one family: the Mathewsons of Thornton-le-Dale. Bangers & Cash produced Restoring Classics, and the channel has built a wider strand around them with Flipping Bangers and Find It, Fix It, Flog It.

Military and social history

Archive war documentaries are what the channel was founded on. The World at War still anchors a run of conflict and social history titles pulled from decades of British broadcast archive.

Natural history and engineering

The rest is natural history and engineering: A Perfect Planet, plus Abandoned Engineering and Secrets of the London Underground, which are really infrastructure documentaries wearing a history badge.

How to watch Yesterday

Channel numbers

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

Yesterday is free on all of the above platforms, with no subscription required. Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat channel numbers can vary slightly by region and box, so your on-screen guide is the definitive source if these don’t match.

Streaming online

Yesterday streams live and free on u.co.uk and via the U app on smart TVs, iOS, Android and most streaming boxes. U is UKTV’s streaming service, formerly known as UKTV Play, and it’s free to sign up for. Most Yesterday shows are also available to catch up on demand once they’ve broadcast, though older archive series can come and go from the library.

Yesterday +1 and sister channels

Yesterday +1 runs the main schedule exactly an hour behind, on Freeview channel 26. Miss the start of a Bangers & Cash episode on the main channel and +1 lets you pick it up from close to the beginning an hour later instead.

Yesterday sits within the wider UKTV stable alongside Dave, Drama, Really and Alibi. If you enjoy Yesterday’s history and documentary output, Dave carries more panel shows and sitcoms, while Really leans towards true crime and paranormal programming.

Frequently asked questions

What channel is Yesterday on?

Freeview 27, Sky 155, Virgin Media 129 and Freesat 155. Yesterday +1 is on Freeview 26. All are free to watch.

What’s on Yesterday tonight?

It’s a short documentary run before the boats and the cars take over: Antiques Roadshow at 6pm and A Perfect Planet at 7pm give way to a Canal Boat Diaries double at 8pm and 9pm, then two Bangers & Cash episodes repeat from earlier in the afternoon at 10pm and 11pm.

Is Yesterday free to watch?

Yes, on every major UK platform, with advertising breaks but no subscription fee.

Can I watch Yesterday online for free?

Yes, live and on demand via u.co.uk and the U app, UKTV’s free streaming service.

Verdict

Pound for pound, Yesterday remains one of the better-value channels on Freeview. The archive documentaries that built its reputation are still on air, and Bangers & Cash has grown into the channel’s biggest draw since it began in 2019.

Friday’s evening splits fairly evenly between two strands: Antiques Roadshow and A Perfect Planet get an hour each, then Canal Boat Diaries takes the 8pm and 9pm slots before Bangers & Cash closes the night with two repeats from earlier that afternoon.

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