After three seasons of Tour de France: Unchained, Netflix’s behind-the-scenes docuseries on cycling’s biggest race appears to be coming to an end. According to journalist Daniel Benson, reporting via X, the series is not expected to return for a fourth installment.
French newspaper Le Parisien previously hinted at the show’s uncertain future, noting that teams involved in past seasons had yet to be approached for filming – an unusual delay given previous production timelines. “Normally, we are contacted by Netflix at the end of January regarding spring filming with some of our riders,” a representative from a French team told the paper. “This year, we haven’t received a single call.”
Season 3 will be released just ahead of this summer’s Tour de France. But then the show is done.
Did it work?
Sort of? It had an impact.
Unchained offered fans unique access to teams and riders during the Tour and gained a strong international following, particularly outside of France. But dreams of a major fan boost for the sport – like auto racing got from Netflix's popular Formula 1: Drive to Survive series – never materialized. It also didn’t work as well inside France as Netflix had hoped, according to Le Parisien.
The series – produced in partnership with Tour organizers ASO and Box to Box Films, the same production house behind Drive to Survive – sought to bring cycling to a broader audience. While it succeeded in driving engagement, it also faced criticism. Some riders, including Jumbo-Visma’s Wout van Aert, accused the show of prioritizing drama over accuracy. “It is quite disturbing that stories were placed in the documentary that weren’t there. For me, the series is focused on commotion,” Van Aert said, echoing concerns that the editing process manipulated timelines and exaggerated conflicts.
Drive to Survive has had an enormous impact on Formula 1, particularly in the United States where the sport had previously struggled to take off. But that was down to timing as much as anything. After a successful first season, the show rode a wave of COVID-19 lockdowns where streaming overall surged. By 2024, viewership numbers fell dramatically. The sixth season’s release, in February 2024, saw viewing figures down 23% from the previous year.
(If you want to read more about Drive to Survive’s impact on F1, I highly recommend The Formula, by friend of EC Joshua Robinson of the Wall Street Journal.)
Beyond less fortunate timing, Unchained had its own issues. It was crafted for a French audience, with much of the dialogue in French, with subtitles, limiting its appeal to non-French audiences from day one. Drive to Survive was an entirely English affair, including via the thoroughly fluent drivers themselves.
Season one of Unchained was more popular than Netflix’s similar series on tennis, but less popular than F1 and golf. It was viewed for a total of 36.1 million hours in 2023.
That’s a lot of hours, and the show did have a positive impact. We saw a small slice of it here at Escape. We recorded podcasts to go along with Unchained episodes and, purely anecdotally, those did pull in new cycling fans and Escape members. That podcast has 40 five-star ratings on iTunes and I have a small handful of emails, DMs, and conversations pointing to the show and the podcasts as people's entry point to cycling fandom.
That was always the goal, at least for those of us inside cycling. It's why we were excited about the show and why it's a bummer it's going away. Netflix France wanted to boost French subscribers, but we just wanted more people to know their Pogačar from their Vingegaard.
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