The platform releases its documentary event behind the scenes of the Tour de France 2022 on Thursday June 8.
It’s the Tour de France as we’ve never seen it before. During the 2022 edition, Netflix filmed behind the scenes. This gives Tour de France: at the heart of the peloton, eight bluffing episodes which will be put online Thursday, June 8 at 9 a.m., in partnership with franceinfo. Dolorès Emile, director of documentary series and streaming programs at Netflix France, is the media guest of Célyne Baÿt-Darcourt, Tuesday June 6. It sums up the ambition of this series in one formula: to please both “for purists and tourists”.
Whether you like cycling or not, you can only be captivated by this documentary series which goes as fast as the Tour de France peloton, accompanied by an explosive soundtrack, as the American platform knows so well. She manages to make it a breathtaking story for those who followed the race last year (and therefore who know the name of the winner) and to capture the attention of novices, both by popularizing the rules, the stakes, the strategies, and maintaining suspense from start to finish. The gamble of seducing a new, younger audience could well pay off. This is the same recipe as the one used for Pilots of their destiny (Drive To Survive) on Formula 1: the five seasons were a hit on Netflix and helped revive interest in this sport.
In Tour de France: at the heart of the peloton, the viewer is embarked in the buses of eight teams, in the cars of the leaders and commentators, in the hotels of the riders. There are also cameras installed on the bikes. But it goes beyond the sporty aspect. These are human stories that are told. Netflix bet on around thirty protagonists of the Tour, went to film them in the spring, in their daily life like Thibaut Pinot (who we see feeding his goats at his home in Haute-Saône), in their preparation (Julian Alaphilippe who trains before learning that he will ultimately not be selected). Stories that bring tears to our eyes, for example the story of Fabio Jakobsen who almost died in an accident in a sprint in 2020 and who won a stage in this Tour de France. Their testimonies are mixed with extracts from the race broadcast on France Télé.
A regret, but Netflix has nothing to do with it: the absence of the team of double winner Tadej Pogacar, who refused to participate in the documentary. Perhaps she will agree to season 2, which will be filmed on the 2023 Tour.