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

Dave runs a comedy evening, and the best of it is early

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

Dave’s night peaks before 9pm. Gone Fishing at 7pm leads into two back-to-back episodes of Would I Lie To You?, and that is a strong ninety minutes by anyone’s standards. After that the evening settles into panel-show routine.

Start with the fishing. Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is a BBC Two series with Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, now at five series and 32 episodes. Its 40-minute slot is short, and it is the most relaxed thing on any channel at 7pm, where it faces The One Show and Police Interceptors. It earns its place at the top of the evening.

Would I Lie To You? is the pick. It has run for 13 series and 110 episodes, led by Lee Mack, and it airs at 7.40pm and again at 8.20pm. Opposite sit EastEnders and Coronation Street, so this is the programme to choose if soaps are not your thing. It also turns up at 12.40am and 1.20am, which tells you how central it is to the schedule. It is a fixture, so the question for the reader is only whether tonight’s two instalments are ones they have seen before, and the schedule cannot tell them.

QI XL at 9pm is the longer cut of the quiz, and it is the programme the night is built around by length. It also airs at 2.35am, so it is on twice today. Against Blue Lights on BBC One and Gogglebox on E4 it is the lightest choice, and it works as background television better than as appointment viewing. Three stars feels right.

At 10pm Have I Got A Bit More News For You? closes the main run, and 8 Out of 10 Cats sits at 11pm. Both run on most days in the window, so neither is a surprise. The first has a decent claim on anyone who still wants topical comedy after a long day, though it faces BBC News at Ten in the same slot.

The afternoon is food and travel (Rick Stein’s Road to Mexico four times, Hairy Bikers’ Chicken And Egg twice), which is worth a note only because it shows how much of Dave’s day is repetition. The evening is where it stops.


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 Dave tonight?

On Tuesday 27 October 2026, Dave shows Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing at 7pm, Would I Lie To You? at 7.40pm, Would I Lie To You? at 8.20pm, QI XL at 9pm and Have I Got A Bit More News For You? at 10pm.

Is there a film on Dave tonight?

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

What’s on Dave late tonight?

After 11pm, Dave has 8 Out of 10 Cats at 11pm.

What time does Dave’s evening start?

The evening schedule starts with Hairy Bikers’ Chicken And Egg at 6pm.

Would I Lie To You?, and the panel shows around it

Dave is a comedy channel, and more specifically a panel-show channel, and one programme does more to define it than any other. Would I Lie To You? aired on every one of the 34 days we tracked, 140 times in all, which works out at roughly four showings a day. Around it sit QI XL, Have I Got A Bit More News For You?, Mock the Week and 8 Out of 10 Cats, and by late evening the channel is close to wall-to-wall panel comedy.

It is also a channel of repeats, unapologetically so. 95% of its airtime went to titles that came back on three or more days in the window, and films barely appear at all. What makes Dave worth knowing is not novelty but reliability: the same jokes, in more or less the same order, most nights of the year.

What its day looks like

Daytime is a different channel. Mornings mix quiz and factual: Pointless turns up around 7.10am on some days, and Border Force America’s Gatekeepers held 8am on 20 days, with Yukon Gold and Cops On The Rock in the same stretch. Late morning brings food and travel. Rick Stein’s Cornwall ran in long blocks around 10am, 80 airings packed into ten days, and Hairy Bikers’ Best of British usually takes midday, alternating with The Hairy Bikers’ Asian Adventure.

The afternoon is for motoring and gentle factual. Canal Boat Diaries held 1pm on 15 days, Top Gear ran on 31 of the 34 days from around 2pm, often in pairs, and the 3pm slot goes to series such as Guy Martin: Proper Jobs and James May’s Cars of the People.

The evening, 6pm to 10.30pm, is where Dave becomes itself. Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing held 7pm on 25 days, always in that slot, and the celebrity game show I’ll Get This or the dog show Wagging Rights sometimes fills the gap before 8.20pm, when Would I Lie To You? arrives. QI XL follows at 9pm on most nights. At 10pm, Have I Got A Bit More News For You? took the slot on around 24 nights (the title appears with and without its question mark), with plain QI or Mock the Week on others.

Late night stays with comedy. 8 Out of 10 Cats held 11pm on 25 days without moving, and Mock the Week usually follows at around 11.50pm. After that come the repeats of the repeats: Live at the Apollo around 2am, Richard Osman’s House of Games at about 2.50am, Judge Romesh and Ghosts in the small hours, and teleshopping from around 4am.

Popular shows on Dave

Would I Lie To You? is a British panel show that began on BBC One in 2007, with Lee Mack among its regulars. It has run to 13 series and 110 episodes, and on Dave it is less a programme than part of the furniture: four airings a day on average, with an 8.20pm showing most evenings.

QI XL is the extended version of the comedy quiz QI, a format that dates from 2009 in its longer form. It held 9pm on 25 days.

Have I Got News for You is the panel show that began on BBC Two in 1990, with Ian Hislop and Paul Merton as its fixtures. It has run to 69 series and 610 episodes. On Dave it appears mostly in its longer cut, Have I Got A Bit More News For You?, at 10pm, with the standard version on a few nights at 9pm.

Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is the factual series with Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse, first shown on BBC Two in 2018, with five series and 32 episodes. It is the gentlest thing in Dave’s evening and has held 7pm with complete regularity.

8 Out of 10 Cats is a comedy panel game from 2005, first shown on Channel 4, with Sean Lock, Rob Beckett, Aisling Bea and Katherine Ryan among its cast. It runs to 22 series and 216 episodes and occupies 11pm.

Mock the Week is a BBC Two panel show from 2005, with Hugh Dennis and Andy Parsons among its regulars, plus Frankie Boyle and Russell Howard in the cast. It has 15 series and 181 episodes and closes most nights.

Scripted comedy is rarer. The Lee Mack sitcom Not Going Out, first shown on BBC One in 2006, took a few 9pm slots, and one of those was a Christmas special: seasonal, not a sign of the year-round schedule.

How to watch Dave

On screen the channel is now U&Dave. It is free to air on Freeview channel 19, Sky 111 (112 in Wales), Sky Glass 130 (132 in Scotland), Virgin Media 127, Freesat 157 and Freely 19. A timeshift channel, U&DaveJaVu, sits on Freeview 74 in local TV areas and on Sky 211. Dave also streams live and on demand through U, the free service that used to be called UKTV Play. A TV Licence is needed to watch or record it live.

Dave and its sister channels

Dave is one of the U& family, alongside Drama, Yesterday, Alibi, Gold, W and Eden. Drama is the family’s archive drama channel, with classic medical soaps in the morning and detectives at night. Yesterday is factual, with a heavy diet of classic-car programmes, canals and war history, and it shares some of Dave’s daytime titles such as Canal Boat Diaries and Guy Martin: Proper Jobs.

For comedy repeats elsewhere, E4 runs American sitcoms such as Modern Family and Brooklyn Nine-Nine by the dozen, though its evenings lean on reality. ITV2 is the nearest thing to Dave’s game-show side, with Celebrity Catchphrase and Deal or No Deal on every day.

Who it’s for

Dave is for someone who wants laughs on in the background and does not mind having heard the jokes before. If you like a panel show, there is one on most of the evening and most of the night. If you want new comedy, sitcom or drama, you will spend a long time waiting.

What channel is Dave on Freeview?

Dave, shown on screen as U&Dave, is on Freeview channel 19.

Can I watch Dave online?

Yes. It streams live and on demand on U, the free service that replaced UKTV Play.

What’s on Dave most evenings?

Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing at 7pm, Would I Lie To You? at 8.20pm, QI XL at 9pm and a Have I Got News for You extended edition at 10pm, with 8 Out of 10 Cats at 11pm.

Does Dave show films?

Almost never. Over five weeks we counted close to no films on the channel.