Full 5Star listings for Tuesday 27 October 2026, with times in London local time.

5Star runs a night of emergencies and enforcement, with one oddity at eight

See also: What's on tonight across all channels | Wednesday's TV guide

The most useful thing to know about 5Star tonight is that its primetime is four hours of documentary with a single theme: people in trouble, and the professionals or officials dealing with them. If that suits, the evening is easy. If it doesn’t, there is nothing else here to switch to.

Casualty 24/7: Every Second Counts at 8pm is the pick, mostly because it is the hour with the most going on. It is listed as series 1, episode 1, which sounds like a fresh start. The same title is down at 2am as series 10, episode 4, so the numbering is hard to read, and I wouldn’t promise anyone a first episode. What is clear is that it is a daily fixture on the channel, and it goes up against NCIS on 5USA and Police Interceptors on 5Action.

GPs: Behind Closed Doors fills 7pm as episode 22 of series 6. It is a Channel 5 series about general practitioners, now on its seventh series overall, and it is a sensible lead-in to the hour after. Not a night-making show, but a competent one.

Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law at 9pm is the weakest of the three. It is episode 3, and the show already aired episode 2 at midnight, so the channel is clearly happy to fill space with it. Call the Bailiffs: Time To Pay Up follows at 10pm and also turned up at 5pm, which tells you how much of the evening is the same handful of programmes.

Skin A&E closes things at 11pm with episode 11 of series 4. It is the second time today it has aired, after an early-morning showing at 2.45am.


Also on TV tonight at 9pm

  • BBC One: Blue Lights
  • BBC Two: Surgeons: At the Edge of Life
  • ITV1: New: Unbelievable Moments:…
  • Channel 4: The Great British Bake Off (from 8pm)
  • Channel 5: Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild
  • BBC Four: The Normans
  • ITV2: Big Brother
  • ITV3: Vera (from 8pm)
  • ITV4: Junk and Disorderly
  • E4: Gogglebox

Every channel tonight, side by side · Films on TV tonight · Tomorrow’s TV


Frequently asked questions

What’s on 5Star tonight?

On Tuesday 27 October 2026, 5Star shows GPs: Behind Closed Doors at 7pm, Casualty 24/7: Every Second Counts at 8pm, Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law at 9pm and Call the Bailiffs: Time To Pay Up at 10pm.

Is there a film on 5Star tonight?

No. 5Star has no films in its evening schedule on Tuesday 27 October 2026.

What’s on 5Star late tonight?

After 11pm, 5Star has Skin A&E at 11pm.

What time does 5Star’s evening start?

The evening schedule starts with Home and Away at 6pm.

A factual channel that turns medical after dark

5Star is a British channel that launched in 2006, and on the evidence of the five weeks we tracked it is almost entirely factual television: police and traffic documentary by day, hospital and GP documentary by night. Across 34 days, 95% of its airtime went to titles that came back on three or more days, and scripted drama barely registers once the evening starts. Documentary takes 23% of the whole day but 59% of the hours between 7pm and 11pm, which is the clearest single number about what this channel is for.

It is not a channel of premieres or big events. It is a channel of reliable strands, and once you know the handful of titles it leans on, you know most of what it will show on any given day.

What its day looks like

The day begins in the small hours with crime documentary and repeats of the soap Home and Away, which aired on 30 of the 34 days but almost always overnight, usually around 3.35am. It is an odd home for a soap, and nobody should expect to find it in a teatime slot here. Teleshopping fills part of every night as well: it appeared on all 34 days, typically from 4am, and shopping accounts for 16% of the channel’s airtime overall. Two branded sales slots, Shop: Must Have Ideas at 7am and eFOLDi Mobility Scooters at 7.30am, turned up on 23 days each.

Breakfast and mid-morning belong to holiday and money programmes. Bargain-Loving Brits in the Sun held 8am on 25 days, and the 10am hour rotates between debt-collection and landlord series: Call the Bailiffs: Time To Pay Up, Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords and Fare Dodgers: At War With The Law.

The afternoon is where the cars come in. Traffic Cops (usually 1pm) and Police Interceptors (usually 2pm) each ran on 30 of the 34 days, and between them they clocked up 200 airings, often in back-to-back blocks. Rogue Claimers then holds 5pm on most days, a reliable bridge into the evening.

The evening, from 6pm to 10.30pm, is the most settled part of the schedule. GPs: Behind Closed Doors held 7pm on 25 of the 34 days, every one of them in the same slot, and Casualty 24/7: Every Second Counts followed at 8pm on 25 days too. That is a fixed two-hour medical block most nights of the week. The 9pm slot rotates between ambulance and emergency series (Ambulance: Code Red, 999 Critical Condition, Trauma Room One, Street Cops: Catching the Yobs), and A&E After Dark took 10pm on 15 evenings. Entertainment News On 5 slots in around 10pm on some nights.

Late night brings Skin A&E, usually around 11pm, and occasionally Piers Morgan: Uncensored around 11.20pm, before the crime strands return. Motorway Cops: Catching Britain’s Speeders and Sleeping with My Murderer both typically start at 1am.

Popular shows on 5Star

GPs: Behind Closed Doors is the channel’s most dependable fixture: a factual series about general practitioners, first shown in 2014, with seven series made. On 5Star it is the 7pm programme, and it did not move once in the window.

Casualty 24/7: Every Second Counts is the hospital documentary that follows it at 8pm. It ran on 29 of the 34 days in all, 44 times, and is the second half of the channel’s medical evening.

Police Interceptors is a British documentary and reality series that began in 2008, with five series and 61 episodes on record. It was the most-aired title on 5Star in the window apart from teleshopping, with 105 showings, mostly in the early afternoon.

Traffic Cops is a documentary series that started in 2003 and was first shown on BBC One. It ran for 14 series and 105 episodes, which gives 5Star a deep back catalogue to draw on: 95 airings across the five weeks.

Bargain-Loving Brits in the Sun is the morning’s lighter note, a documentary and reality series. It held 8am on 25 days and often ran twice.

The channel does show the odd film, but rarely. Over 34 days the only films in the evening were four titles, each on two nights at 9pm: Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and Fifty Shades Freed (2018), both directed by James Foley and starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, and David Twohy’s science fiction pair Pitch Black (2000), with Vin Diesel, and The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). Weekly, that rounds to roughly no films at all.

How to watch 5Star

5Star is free to air. It is on Freeview channel 32, Sky 128 (129 in Scotland), Sky Glass 128, Virgin Media 126 and Freesat 131. On Freely it sits at 25. You can also watch it live and catch up on recent programmes through 5, the free streaming service that used to be called My5. As with any live channel in the UK, you need a TV Licence to watch or record it as it is broadcast.

5Star and its sister channels

5Star belongs to the same family as Channel 5, 5USA, 5Action and the newer 5Drama. Channel 5 is the flagship, with the soaps, entertainment and new commissions that 5Star repeats or sits alongside. 5USA is where American crime and legal drama lives, so it is the place to go if you want scripted television rather than documentary. 5Action shares some of 5Star’s police series but pairs them with classic westerns in the afternoon. 5Drama is the family’s home for drama.

Outside the family, the closest match in mood is Really, another channel made almost entirely of reality and documentary, with a few medical series in its evenings, though it spends far more time on homes, antiques and the paranormal than on the emergency services.

Who it’s for

5Star is for someone who likes watching real people deal with real problems: police chases, bailiffs at the door, a busy GP surgery, a stretched A&E department. The medical evening at 7pm and 8pm is the closest thing it has to an appointment, and it keeps that appointment almost every night. If you are looking for drama, comedy or a film to settle down with, this is not where they live. On weekdays drama makes up 13% of the schedule, at weekends just 4%, and most of that is overnight soap.

What channel is 5Star on Freeview?

5Star is on Freeview channel 32. It is also on Sky 128, Virgin Media 126 and Freesat 131.

Can I watch 5Star online?

Yes. It streams live, with catch-up, on 5, the free service formerly known as My5.

What’s on 5Star most evenings?

GPs: Behind Closed Doors at 7pm, then Casualty 24/7: Every Second Counts at 8pm. After that, the 9pm and 10pm slots are usually emergency or A&E documentaries.

Does 5Star show films?

Only now and then. Over five weeks we counted four films in the evening schedule, each shown on two nights at 9pm.