Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tour de France: Unchained’ Season 2 on Netflix, a Serialized Look Inside Competitive Cycling’s Marquee Event

How much does the average American sports fan know about the Tour de France? Yellow jerseys, mountain roads, and lots of bikes, right? Tour de France: Unchained, an as-it-happens docu-series returning for its second season on Netflix, seeks to bring competitive cycling’s marquee event to the mainstream masses. Using the now-familiar Drive To Survive format, we’re seeing the competition as it happens, while getting to know some of the most compelling personalities within it.

TOUR DE FRANCE UNCHAINED – SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We jump straight into an intense montage of dramatic moments from the tour–brutal ascents, big crashes, that sort of thing–set to thudding electronic music. “It’s gotta be the toughest challenge in the world,” one rider intones. “It can take you to the top, the summit… or it can crush you,” another says. (Right after this, we see a rider crash over a guardrail.) It’s not a great advertisement for participating in the race, but it’s a good start for a show.

The Gist: The Tour de France is a sporting event that lends itself especially well to the serialized-Netflix-docudrama treatment. 21 stages of racing allows for a natural back-and-forth between dramatic sports action and off-the-bike story-building. We meet some of the key riders and their teams, and have weeks of action in the 2023 Tour condensed into well-shot highlight reels. It’s a formula that Netflix has used a number of times now, but it’s at its best here.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? I feel like every time I review a sports series on streaming lately, I compare it to Drive To Survive, Netflix’s golden-goose hit about Formula One racing. Well, I’m gonna do it again–and it’s especially apt here, as Tour de France Unchained comes from the same production team, follows a similar structure, and focuses on a sport that’s wildly-popular in Europe but somewhat niche to American audiences.

Our Take: The Tour de France had a moment with American viewers during the reign of seven-time tour winner Lance Armstrong some twenty years ago (titled that were, of course, later stripped due to doping allegations), but it’s not a sport that gets a ton of mainstream coverage stateside these days.

I’m sure there are some avid cycling fans who might get mad at me for saying that, but pump your brakes (bike term)–I’m not saying that that lack of coverage is justified. In fact, the sport is primed for a new wave of broad-appeal popularity, the kind of surge in everyman interest that Formula One racing experiences on the heels of a wildly-successful Netflix series. Tour de France: Unchained, now entering its second season, seeks to replicate the Drive to Survive formula by showing what a great, dramatic sport competitive cycling is–a sport full of huge personalities, huge drama, and no small element of danger.

That danger’s introduced from the opening moments of the series, where a montage of thrilling moments includes a few spectacular crashes. It’s brought to bear in a much more sobering sense early in the first episode, titled “No Risk, No Reward”, when riders’ mental preparation for the upcoming tour is rattled by the news that Swiss rider Gino Mäder has died after a crash in the 2023 Tour de Suisse.

No sooner is a moment of silence completed for the fallen rider than we dive into the Tour’s first stage, a treacherous stretch of mountain roads in Spain’s Basque Country. Early on, a crash threatens to take Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz out of the race. He climbs back on the bike and valiantly struggles to finish the stage, clearly in a great deal of pain. A medical exam after the stage shows a fractured kneecap, and he’s forced to pull out.

“I didn’t want to let people down, or myself,” Carapaz notes, wincing at the memory in an interview.

While there are countless smaller dramas like this, the big story promises to be the battle between the UAE team, led by Slovenian Tadej Pogačar, a two-time Tour winner and the sport’s #1 ride, and Jumbo-Visma, led by Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard. Both finish strong in the first stage, and it’s clear that the road (cycling pun) to victory in the tour is going to run through them.

Sex and Skin: There’s a lot of skin, but it’s mostly road-rash-scarred. If you find that sexy, I recommend keeping that to yourself.

Parting Shot: After a battle between Pogačar and Vingegaard in the mountains, the Tour’s second stage rolls into San Sebastian. British rider Tom Pidcock and Belgian Wout van Aert appear to be locked in a struggle for the finish, only to see Frenchman Victor Lafay break free of the peloton at the last moment for a surprise stage win. It’s a hell of a sequence, and the kind of thing that can give a newbie viewer a feel for just how exciting cycling can be. Afterwards, we see the other teams angrily licking their wounds, and steeling themselves for the long ride ahead.

Sleeper Star: It feels like cheating to pick the world’s number one cyclist as a “sleeper”, but Slovenian star rider Tadej Pogačar isn’t exactly a household name among sports fans. He’s a compelling figure on the bike and off, and gets plenty of screen time in Tour de France: Unchained.

Most Pilot-y Line: “We all want to find out who we are. And generally, you find out if you compete here,” one commentator notes. It’s the ultimate test of endurance and strength, but also sheer will.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If there’s any sport ready for a Formula One-style breakout in popularity among American viewers, it’s cycling, and Tour de France: Unchained is a great way to get up to speed. (Cycling pun.)

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.