After more than a decade as one of Freeview’s stalwart movie channels, Great! Movies is being demoted today in a channel reshuffle that sees it lose its status as a “proper” terrestrial channel.
Starting September 4, Great! Movies is swapping places with Great! Mystery – but this isn’t just a simple number change.
What’s actually happening is that Great! Movies is going from being a channel you can watch with just an aerial to one that needs both an aerial and broadband to work (and a connected Freeview box).
Meanwhile, on Sky, Great! Movies is permanently changing into Great! Mystery.
The good news is that Great! Mystery, along with some of the other Great! Channels are getting a content boost.
The Long Journey from Sony to Great!
What we now know as the Great! Movies channel started life back in 2014 when Sony Pictures Television bought CSC Media Group and all their free-to-air channels, including what was then called “Sony Movies.”
For years, Sony Movies sat happily on Freeview Channel 33, showing everything from Hollywood blockbusters to the more obscure stuff from Sony’s massive film library.
It was part of a family that included Sony Movies Classic, Sony Movies Action, and the seasonal Sony Movies Christmas that popped up every winter.
Everything changed in May 2021 when American investment firm Narrative Capital bought Sony’s entire UK channel collection.
The rebrand to “Great!” started on May 25th that year, with Sony Movies becoming Great! Movies and all the others following suit.
Since then, Great! Channels’ road has been… eventful. Great! Real, for example got the chop from both Freeview and Sky just five months after its launch, eventually becoming streaming-only.
Then in February 2024, all the Great! channels vanished from Freesat without any warning – a sudden disappearance that left satellite viewers with hardly any movie options and sparked plenty of angry complaints.
What’s Changing Today
Great! Movies, which has lived on Freeview Channel 50 until now, is moving to Channel 61.
Meanwhile, Great! Mystery – previously stuck on Channel 61 as a streaming-only service – is taking over the much better Channel 50 slot and becoming a full terrestrial channel.
Here’s the important difference: Channel 61 operates as a streaming channel, which means you need both a Freeview aerial and a working broadband connection to watch it.
No internet? No Great! Movies. This also means you can’t record it on traditional Freeview boxes like the popular Manhattan T4-R – the streaming nature just doesn’t play nicely with older recording equipment.
Great! Mystery’s promotion to Channel 50, on the other hand, means it becomes a standard over-the-air channel that only needs an aerial – the way most Freeview channels still work.
Similar changes are happening across Sky’s platform today, where Great! Movies (Satellite 321), Great! Movies HD (Glass/Stream 318), and Great! Movies+1 (Satellite 322) are all permanently rebranding to their Great! Mystery equivalents.
In addition to connected Channel 61, Great! Movies will also continue to be available on the Great! Player – Narrative’s streaming platform – which is available on streaming devices such as the Amazon Fire TV sticks, and on the web.
Why the Change?
According to Narrative Entertainment, which runs the Great! network, it all comes down to viewing figures.
“Mystery has proved to be really popular since launch,” a spokesperson told Cord Busters, which explains why they’re giving the crime-focused channel the easier-to-access terrestrial slot.
The company also said they’re integrating more movie content into the genre channels (TV, Action, Mystery and Romance/Christmas), so there’s still plenty of movies across the portfolio.
What’s On Great! Mystery?
Great! Mystery’s success makes sense when you look at what it actually broadcasts.
The channel has built up a decent following with classic detective series like Murder, She Wrote and Castle, plus British crime dramas such as Ruth Rendell Mysteries.
Mystery and crime shows have always done well on television – they’ve got loyal audiences who’ll happily binge-watch episode after episode.
By giving Great! Mystery the more accessible Channel 50 slot, Narrative is clearly banking on viewers being more interested in detective marathons than the mixed bag of older films that Great! Movies offered.
Christmas Comes Early (Again)
Today’s channel shuffle coincides with another yearly ritual we told you about earlier this week – the arrival of Great! Christmas.
The festive channel returns to Freeview Channel 52, Sky 319, and Virgin Media 424, temporarily booting out Great! Romance for its four-month Christmas takeover until January 6.
This year’s highlights include the UK terrestrial debut of Christmas in the Caribbean starring Liz Hurley, plus Christmas at Graceland: Home for the Holidays with Priscilla Presley.
Steve Hornsey from Narrative Entertainment isn’t apologising for the early start: “Forget the naysayers, everybody loves Christmas – and the earlier it starts, the better.”
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