Rewind TV – the Freeview channel dedicated to rescuing classic British television from the archives – has announced its May lineup, and it includes some much-loved titles.
Three iconic series are joining the schedule this month: Cold War espionage with Danger Man, quiet village mystery with Father Brown (the ITV version!), and a Salvation Army officer waging war on sin in Yorkshire with Hallelujah!.
There’s also a pair of music shows returning by popular demand.
“Danger Man is a defining British series and a real highlight of our May schedule,” says Rewind TV’s Jonathan Moore. “Alongside Father Brown and Hallelujah! it reflects exactly what Rewind TV is about – rediscovering classic television that still connects with audiences today.”
Where to Find Rewind TV
Since launching on Sky in May 2024 and expanding to Freeview that September, Rewind TV has established itself as a reliable home for classic British programming that might otherwise remain locked in archives.
You can currently find it on Freeview Channel 81, Sky Channel 182 (satellite only), and Freely Channel 141 (only on the aerial-connected version of Freely).
The channel remains absent from Sky Stream, Sky Glass, and Freesat, and has no app version, so it remains truly old-school in its programming and broadcasting.
Danger Man
Danger Man arrives May 1 at 7:00pm, and it’s a genuine landmark of British television, finally getting a Rewind TV outing.
Patrick McGoohan stars as John Drake, a principled and highly intelligent agent who works first for NATO and later for the fictional British intelligence service M9.
Created by Ralph Smart and financed by Lew Grade’s ITC Entertainment, the series ran from 1960 to 1962 and was then revived in a longer format from 1964 to 1968 – running until McGoohan left to make The Prisoner.
What made Drake stand out in an era of increasingly outlandish spy fiction was his deliberate restraint.
McGoohan – who famously turned down the role of James Bond – insisted from the outset that Drake would use his brain rather than his gun, avoid gratuitous violence, and have absolutely no romantic entanglements.
For a spy show, those are fairly unusual ground rules, and they give Danger Man a grounded, procedural quality that holds up remarkably well.
The series predated the Bond film boom by two years, and its influence on the genre is hard to overstate.
McGoohan won a BAFTA for his performance, and at the height of the show’s popularity he was the highest-paid actor on British television. If you’ve always meant to go back and watch it, this is a good opportunity.
Father Brown
Father Brown starts May 2 at 4:15pm, bringing back the 1974 ITV adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s beloved detective priest – a rather different proposition to the long-running BBC version with Mark Williams that many viewers will be more familiar with.
Kenneth More plays Father Brown across 13 episodes, each closely adapted from one of Chesterton’s original short stories.
Dennis Burgess appears as the reformed thief-turned-investigator Flambeau, who turns up occasionally to assist.
The series was produced by Sir Lew Grade for Associated Television, and what it lacks in modern production values it more than makes up for in fidelity to the source material.
Chesterton’s Father Brown is a quietly unassuming figure – shabby, soft-spoken, seemingly easy to overlook – and More’s performance leans into that, giving the character warmth and a gentle persistence rather than the folksy charm of later interpretations.
The BBC’s current version (now into its 13th series) has kept Father Brown firmly in the public eye, which makes this a timely companion piece – a chance to see where the character came from, and how differently the same stories can be told.
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! starts May 4 at 10:30am and 8:05pm, and it’s the kind of sitcom that tends to prompt “whatever happened to that?” conversations once people are reminded it exists.
Thora Hird stars as Captain Emily Ridley, a Salvation Army officer who has been fighting sin with impressive dedication for over 42 years.
Posted to the fictional Yorkshire town of Brigthorpe, she arrives convinced that moral catastrophe is lurking behind every net curtain – and sets about doing something about it. Patsy Rowlands plays her niece Alice, who assists (and frequently endures) Emily’s crusades.
The series was written by Dick Sharples, who had already worked with Hird on the Yorkshire Television sitcom In Loving Memory, and it ran for two series and a Christmas special on ITV between 1983 and 1984.
Guest appearances include Richard Whiteley and Michael Aldridge – the latter would go on to appear alongside Hird in Last of the Summer Wine, a role written especially for her after the planned BBC sequel to Hallelujah! never materialised.
Bubblegum & Cheese and Stereo Underground
Rewind TV also welcomes back two of its music series this May, both returning by viewer request.
Bubblegum & Cheese returns weekdays at 9:00am, delivering curated playlists of pop classics from the 1960s through to the 1990s with a side order of playful humour.
Stereo Underground follows weekdays at 5:00pm, covering indie, new wave, and alternative music from the same era – a more left-field companion to Bubblegum’s mainstream pop selections.
After Hours
No After Hours titles have been announced for May yet, but Rewind TV’s late-night cult film strand – which has previously brought rarely seen and occasionally eyebrow-raising films from the late 1960s through to the early 1980s to Freeview – may well have more to announce as the month approaches.
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