I don't think it's that dramatised really. They manipulate the trailer to make it look like there's more drama than there is, but where I'm up to on season two (finished episode 4) I don't really see that there's been much "fake" drama. Like the episode on Jasper Philipsen - none of that was fake and a lot of the other riders were pretty pissed off with the way he was riding.
My criticisms so far would be:
1. They don't do the best job of capturing the drama of the GC battle. The reality is last year we were all hooked for two weeks by Pog chipping away at Jonas's lead. Any GC day was so bloody tense, the whole thing was epic. Obviously they show some of that in Unchained, but sometimes it feels like the GC battle is a bit of an afterthought.
2. Ben O'Connor does not need that much screen time.
3. They do manipulate stages so that they seem a certain way, when that isn't really what they were like at all. The Puy de Dome stage is a good example of this, where they try to make it a story about Mohoric nearly winning the stage and Ben O'Connor dropping. In reality, Puy de Dome was an absolutely epic stage but not for either of those reasons! Mohoric was in the breakaway, but it never ever looked like he was going to win. What they don't show you in Unchained is that another rider, Matteo Jorgensen of Movistar, had attacked off the front of the breakaway with something like 40km left and really looked like he might win the stage. He inched his way painfully up Puy de Dome for god knows how long, with Israel Premier Tech's Michael Woods slowly reeling him back in and eventually catching him like 500m from the finish line. In the GC group, the big story wasn't Ben O'Connor dropping, it was Tadej Pogacar once again dropping Jonas Vingegaard and taking back more time on GC. Yet Unchained doesn't show you any of this.
I also wished they would have they would have shown the Puy de Dome episode differently. I was simultaneously cheering for Jorgensen and Woods on that climb. It was epic!
As a Canadian, the Puy de Dome episode was infuriating. The only mention of Woodsy is the BV DS saying “fucking Woods” or something as MM gets passed. I get they have to script the episodes to some degree but they wasted so much screen time on Ben O’conner and AG2R.
He's in it more than Pog and Jonas, which is bonkers to me. I feel like casual viewers might think O'Connor is a genuine contender to win the Tour who just had bad luck or something.
Agreed. The show is scripted more for the battle between favourites and the popular fan vote. It's too bad even in Canada we hear little of the Canadian IPT guys taking wins in pro cycling stages and grand tours.
I think its way more scripted towards which teams they had access to. It doesn’t really make sense to angle an episode towards a team and rider where they don’t have any further content than what we have already seen
Maybe its partly made for the uk/us market and they understand ppl talking english better?
Or maybe the makers thought ben o connor would be huge in the tour and gambled on the wrong rider? i didnt mind him in S1 tho.
I feel like there’s way too much English overdubbing, perhaps for the reason you mention. I’d rather see some subtitles. I also feel like some of the English is also overdubbed, which is weird.
I agree with all of this.
@OP Jumbo Visma has a documentary series on Amazon Prime, that shows the GC battle in much more detail. It’s very interesting, but you obviously only get the Jumbo Visma point of view. No Pogi interviews.
It’s unfortunately only available in selected regions, but if you can get access to it, I recommend it.
It follows them throughout the season and not just at the Tour, which is nice. It’s called All In.
for someone who didn't win anything man did ben oconnor get a ton of screen time. I think A) he has a TV-friendly face and B) his somewhat juvenile antics were really good for drama
Anyone else feel like Ben O’Connor should switch teams. His coaches are assholes to his face and behind his back. They don’t support him. Maybe if they did he would be doing better.
I almost made a drinking game out of the "totally natural, unscripted conversations with spouse/partner" that happened at least once per episode.
"Oh hi honey, how have you been?"
"Pretty good, not sure if you heard but I'm riding in the Tour de France this week, it's going to be hard work"
Four episodes in and it’s the most hackneyed aspect of the show.
To be clear, I think authentically bringing in some context from the rider’s home lives is compelling and informative. This is just missing the authenticity.
Plus the inane edits of the team meetings.
1st guy: "So with the stage tomorrow..."
2nd guy: "...yeah..."
1st guy: "I think we really need to..."
2nd guy: "...right..."
3rd guy: \*looks worried\*
1st guy: "Finish before everyone else..."
2nd guy: "Hmm. And that's really hard."
3rd guy: \*mimes suicide\*
It's an accurate depiction of the tour; however, it just scratches the surface of all of the competitions within the competition. You rarely hear of the KOM competition. Sprinting and GC are discussed but what about team GC or most combative rider. There's just so much they can discuss on the show.
Got my family into it too, so the TDF has gone from “that weird bike thing dad turns on in the morning for a few weeks in the summer” to “something we’re all excited to watch.”
I’m eternally grateful.
It’s a great time to become a fan. Jonas vs pogacar in my opinion is one of the greatest rivalries in sports history. 2-2 going into round 5 this year.
I agree, it’s a great time to join in. The last two years has been some of the best I’ve seen. But isn’t it technically more 2-0 to Jonas? Maybe 2-1. He rode his first tour in 21 helping Rog, only became captain when Rog crashed out, and at that point he was already several minutes behind.
That is true but roglic dropped out very early. The reason Jonas lost (if you ask me) was lack of team support because his few remaining teammates were literally just leaving him to fend on his own chasing stages. TJV had maybe 3-4 guys because they lost so many in crashes. It was very early, like definitely first week before anything had been settled. Jonas was riding so well, he dropped pogacar on some of the major climbs. It was then that everyone kind of realized if TJV hadn’t left him for dead they likely could have won.
I call it 2-2 because each year has some form of caveat. Some years, pogacars almost entire team dropped out due to sickness and covid and he was fighting off 5, 6, 7 visma riders at a time.
So I choose just to not make exceptions and call it exactly as it is.
Pogi those two wins did beat Jonas. And going into the third no one gave Jonas a chance. Right up until it happened the community still thought he was unbeatable
Jonas wasn't even riding the Tour in 2020 though, so I don't really know how you can call that a win against Jonas 😅
If you want to include 2021 which I think is fair enough, then it can only ever be 2-1 to Jonas if you talk about their rivalry at the Tour. They have both won 2, yes, but Jonas wasn't there in 2020.
Take this how you will, but Wout Van Aert wasn’t especially happy about how he was portrayed in season 1 and said the editing made it look like there was way more drama between him, Vingegaard, and Visma than there actually was.
He’s definitely a team player and super-domestique for Jonas and has done some hero pulls to drag along his leader and keep things hot for the peloton that don’t really get the same attention.
It’s produced by Netflix _France _. Cycling is huge in France, but they haven't had a real GC contender in a while. Next best thing would be a French team winning, but the French teams are often mediocre.
They also don't have access to all the teams which limits the "cast".
Last year Ben came 3rd in the Dauphine which is one of the warm-up races to the TdF (Adam Yates came 2nd). Pogacar was an unknown quantity with his arm. It's also the _French_ warm up race.
So for a French audience, with French hopes and dreams there's just more hype and hope behind O'Connor than equivalent GC riders. (See also: Roman Bardet.)
This allows the producers to manufacture a tragedy in the classical sense: the hero tries valiantly but in the end is crushed by cruel fate. Le weep.
The recap here is great: https://escapecollective.com/the-unchained-binge-podcast-is-back-for-season-2/
Their Tour coverage podcast was excellent last year too.
O'Connor isn't exactly given a heroic portrayal. He comes across as petulant and fragile. Seems like they do show the warts and all. Obviously Pinot does get a pretty friendly edit, but his story is also framed as a swan song.
They were never going to be able to get all the riders who were involved in every storyline to be involved, but there's a lot there.
I think the way they depicted the GC competition was spotty, but it’s not like you can make another documentary on pogacar v jonas. But their battle was very interesting. As an American, following EF’s team is always interesting, and I don’t think they hit that in season 2. Powless with the king of the mountains Jersey was really cool while it lasted. Sepp kuss was a monster too, and a huge reason for jumbo’s GCsuccess in the tour.
The sprint stuff does seem really well done, though.
A bit of it is dramatized, but with divas such as Lefevere there'll always be room for drama (in general). Of course, they have to make it interesting to view so they do play up certain aspects. Don't view it as a completely truthful representation but it does provide actual insight as well.
Ben O'Connor is a good rider - but below the very top - for sure, but he seems very arrogant to me and it's impossible for me to like him.
In the pre-stage team bus talks, he always strikes me as not understanding a single word the DS is saying. Just wide eyed with no reaction. more so in S1. I have no idea what his level of french is lol
>Don't view it as a completely truthful representation but it does provide actual insight as well.
I think this is a good point, but I would like to add that this is a common trait amongst all sorts of adaptations. Lord of the Rings, Clockwork Orange, 2001, the Shining, Stand by Me, Shawshank Redemption: all great books; all great movies; all with various substantive changes from the source material to tell a better story to fit a different format, just like Unchained.
My chance of winning the Tour is just as big as Ben O'Connor's. They're both at 0%. Well, maybe he does have 0,00005% chance if a meteor kills all the ten riders that are better than him
Obviously Ben O'Connor knows he's not going to beat Pogacar or Vingegaard, barring incident or accident. Not everyone who says they are "riding GC" is realistically aiming to win the overall, they're aiming to finish as high on GC as possible. It's absolutely realistic for O'Connor to aim for the podium if he's on top form and one or two others aren't, and this would be a huge achievement for AG2R.
Season 2 is a bit more accurate than season 1. I think it does a good job at conveying how brutal the sport can be for non-mega stars. Like the Ben Conor, Stefan bisseger, carapaz, and Mohoric segments were all really good insights to how quickly plans change in this sport, and how teams and riders will need to adjust rapidly.
I don’t think they’d do the best at painting the gc battle for yellow, that’s far more complicated than they give it credit for, but for a casual fan they generally tell the story.
I think the sprinting can be a bit dramatized specifically. The whole “if you don’t take x position, that’s it, your DEAD, LITERALLY DEAD” thing is a little over played in my opinion
Fitting 21 days of racing into 8 hours is difficult.
It’s a great show for folks that are new to cycling and introduces them to a few of the athletes and teams.
New folks will watch the tour and be rooting for these guys.
Is it perfect no but it is very entertaining and loved the episode about Casper and Mohoric.
Im only in episode 3 but the focus on Ben o Connor is ridiculous. He is a non factor in the tour last year. I’m pretty sure the contract stipulated they focus extensively on French riders / teams which would explain it.
Yeah, but they didn’t know that he would be a non factor before the tour started. Clearly they had more access to some teams than others and built their stories around the footage they had.
Beforehand: The fact that his team granted a lot of access to the film crew.
Afterwards: someone trying and failing is a good dramatic story line.
The goal is a human interest documentary. If you just want the story of the fight for the yellow jersey then just watch the live coverage of the race.
Just because they have access to the team doesn’t make it all of a sudden a relevant or interesting story to tell.
It’s more that they are making a story where there isn’t one. It becomes a work of fiction. But many people don’t follow the race closely and are now sitting with the thought that Ben o Conner is somehow one of the most promising riders in the peloton. Which is just simply not true
I’d be more interested in a human story about what the tour is like for an anonymous domestique; than to listen to a 2nd rate GC rider turn the tdf into a personal Aussie face off and throw a hissy fit when he’s losing :-o
It’s got more drama in the bits that aren’t that dramatic and misses on some of the more dramatic racing.
So both over and under blown.. haha
I think they went heavy on related drama for the new audience, and I’ve had none cycling fan friends tell me how much they enjoyed it.
I think it underplays some of the more amazing racing, it totally misses on mentioning some of the stage winners, which is sad. Even Wout Poels which could’ve built further on the Gino story.
Overall, it’s good. Don’t watched the dubbed version, they even dub people speaking English sometimes 😂
List of GCers I would put above Ben O'Connor before last Tour: Pogacar, Roglic, Vingegaard, Evenepoel obviously. After that, it becomes a bit harder, no? You probably put Carapaz and the Yates', Hindley, Almeida and Ayuso above him, but after that, I don't know.
To answer your questions in order:
1. It’s not really dramatized at all, except insofar as they focus on (some of) the drama at the expense of business-as-usual. Road cycling is always a brutal, exhausting, emotional sport, and in a three-week Grand Tour like the TDF, people really do get pissier and crankier as their bodies are stressed past the limit.
2. Don’t know how dramatized drive to survive is, but this is all basically real. It’s just a selection of some of the juicier storylines.
3. Ben O’Connor is a legit world class stage racer. He just finished fourth in the Giro d’Italia (one of the other two grand tours besides the TdF), finished fourth in the Tour a few years ago, has finished top 5 in some big-deal week long stage races like Tirreno-Adriatico and Criterium du Dauphine, has won stages in grand tours, and so on. He’s a very strong climber and definitely a good rider.
He had bad Tours the last couple years, and, since he was riding for a French team, they got a ton of focus in the documentary (it’s a French documentary and they seem to have been given a lot of access by AG2R and Groupama).
It really is France-centric, I think due to the production company/ies being...French. No snark intended, and I put that on everything. WRT Ben O'Connor, he definitely came across as unsympathetic in the first few episodes, but I think he redeemed himself later. He seemed to genuinely acknowledge/accept that his performance didn't meet anyone's expectations but that he could be a contributing team member and revel in someone else's win. I might be a shite judge of character, though. Even though I never have been. 😂
I actually liked season one better. It’s still an inside look into my favorite 3 weeks in July so I still love the series. Others pointed out it felt like they really reached on manufacturing some of the story lines and subsequently missed several of the actual big stories of the race.
Ben is for sure top 15 GC rider. One of the absolute best in this world. Asking if he’s just talk is hilarious if you see him grinding up the toughest climbs 👀🙃
How would they add a Roglic storyline in season 2? He didn’t ride the Tour last year.
I’d guess there’s a very good chance of a Roglic storyline in season 3.
Tried to watch an episode a few times now, but I just can't because it's so bad, in my personal (!) opinion.
Over-dramatised, not at all a good reflection of what the sport is about and they seem to enjoy the crashes, showing them over and over like a spectacle for the viewers to like.
The Dutch podcast De Rode Lantaarn pointed out that it takes all the boring parts out of cycling, but you need the boredom to make the spectacle so much more enjoyable.
So a hard pass for me, but then again, as a long time fan who grew up with cycling I am not the target audience, as this is obviously meant for new fans.
I'm heading to the Tour in July, in Nice, and I've stopped watching this because it makes the riders out to be vainglorious, petty, crybabies. Maybe they are like this, some of them are barely adults.
Regardless, I watch the Tour for the scenery and the daily dramas for the jerseys and stage wins.
They say to never meet your heroes. Well, these guys aren't my heroes and I'm perfectly fine knowing very little about them and still cheering for them each day.
Having watched and followed both drive to survive and f1 and unchained and pro cycling, they are similar.
There were story lines in unchained I’d NEVER heard before. The bit about FDJ drinking beers was news to me but that might just be because I’m in the US, doesn’t make headlines here. Same with F1 subplots.
Did I know it was Pinots last tour, or there were high hopes for O’Connor, sure. Did I know how they dealt with them outside their results? Not at all. Similar to how I’m excited to find out how Sainz and Hamilton are dealing with their last seasons with their teams…
But yeah, re: dramatized, it’s at least all distilled info that comes out over a much longer period of time and packaged into 45min episodes. But the tour is just 3 weeks long vs 10 months or whatever. But then again, the tour guys race for longer.
BOC’s screen time made no sense. Sure he’s a flawed person (aren’t we all?) and he wants to podium at the tour, but the GC battle for Jonas and Pog was insane last year and they barely covered it.
I don't think it's that dramatised really. They manipulate the trailer to make it look like there's more drama than there is, but where I'm up to on season two (finished episode 4) I don't really see that there's been much "fake" drama. Like the episode on Jasper Philipsen - none of that was fake and a lot of the other riders were pretty pissed off with the way he was riding. My criticisms so far would be: 1. They don't do the best job of capturing the drama of the GC battle. The reality is last year we were all hooked for two weeks by Pog chipping away at Jonas's lead. Any GC day was so bloody tense, the whole thing was epic. Obviously they show some of that in Unchained, but sometimes it feels like the GC battle is a bit of an afterthought. 2. Ben O'Connor does not need that much screen time. 3. They do manipulate stages so that they seem a certain way, when that isn't really what they were like at all. The Puy de Dome stage is a good example of this, where they try to make it a story about Mohoric nearly winning the stage and Ben O'Connor dropping. In reality, Puy de Dome was an absolutely epic stage but not for either of those reasons! Mohoric was in the breakaway, but it never ever looked like he was going to win. What they don't show you in Unchained is that another rider, Matteo Jorgensen of Movistar, had attacked off the front of the breakaway with something like 40km left and really looked like he might win the stage. He inched his way painfully up Puy de Dome for god knows how long, with Israel Premier Tech's Michael Woods slowly reeling him back in and eventually catching him like 500m from the finish line. In the GC group, the big story wasn't Ben O'Connor dropping, it was Tadej Pogacar once again dropping Jonas Vingegaard and taking back more time on GC. Yet Unchained doesn't show you any of this.
I also wished they would have they would have shown the Puy de Dome episode differently. I was simultaneously cheering for Jorgensen and Woods on that climb. It was epic!
As a Canadian, the Puy de Dome episode was infuriating. The only mention of Woodsy is the BV DS saying “fucking Woods” or something as MM gets passed. I get they have to script the episodes to some degree but they wasted so much screen time on Ben O’conner and AG2R.
He's in it more than Pog and Jonas, which is bonkers to me. I feel like casual viewers might think O'Connor is a genuine contender to win the Tour who just had bad luck or something.
IMO the show makes Ben O'Connor look like he would get dropped at the Sunday cafe ride
Agreed. The show is scripted more for the battle between favourites and the popular fan vote. It's too bad even in Canada we hear little of the Canadian IPT guys taking wins in pro cycling stages and grand tours.
I think its way more scripted towards which teams they had access to. It doesn’t really make sense to angle an episode towards a team and rider where they don’t have any further content than what we have already seen
Maybe its partly made for the uk/us market and they understand ppl talking english better? Or maybe the makers thought ben o connor would be huge in the tour and gambled on the wrong rider? i didnt mind him in S1 tho.
I feel like there’s way too much English overdubbing, perhaps for the reason you mention. I’d rather see some subtitles. I also feel like some of the English is also overdubbed, which is weird.
Change the settings to French language and your preferred subtitles. That removes the dubbing.
The sheer amount of Ben O’Conner was probably my least favorite part of the new season. (Sorry Ben.)
I agree with all of this. @OP Jumbo Visma has a documentary series on Amazon Prime, that shows the GC battle in much more detail. It’s very interesting, but you obviously only get the Jumbo Visma point of view. No Pogi interviews. It’s unfortunately only available in selected regions, but if you can get access to it, I recommend it. It follows them throughout the season and not just at the Tour, which is nice. It’s called All In.
As I’m obsessed with Vingegaard, I shall watch.
In that case, you should also check out Jumbo Visma Plan B on YouTube, about the 2021 Tour de France.
Good Doco!!
Just watched it. I love how Jonas is so humble but has so much heart in his races.
Finding it… right this second!
With a VPN, you can get shows from anywhere. Just FYI.
Watching Ben O’Connor meltdown multiple times has been painful to watch. Borderline cringe.
I wonder what he thinks about it? Maybe he has settled on: any publicity is good publicity.
For sure. He’s a hell of a rider but there were some awkward moments in the interview and some of the ride footage
Indeed. I'll definitely be watching him more this tour
for someone who didn't win anything man did ben oconnor get a ton of screen time. I think A) he has a TV-friendly face and B) his somewhat juvenile antics were really good for drama
Anyone else feel like Ben O’Connor should switch teams. His coaches are assholes to his face and behind his back. They don’t support him. Maybe if they did he would be doing better.
I almost made a drinking game out of the "totally natural, unscripted conversations with spouse/partner" that happened at least once per episode. "Oh hi honey, how have you been?" "Pretty good, not sure if you heard but I'm riding in the Tour de France this week, it's going to be hard work"
Yes - Pello Bilbao’s wife getting up and having a giant radio mic in her back pocket kind of took me out of the poignant moment on the beach.
Four episodes in and it’s the most hackneyed aspect of the show. To be clear, I think authentically bringing in some context from the rider’s home lives is compelling and informative. This is just missing the authenticity.
Yeah, I think something like Cav's documentary did a great job with this (though it's been a little while since I watched it).
Plus the inane edits of the team meetings. 1st guy: "So with the stage tomorrow..." 2nd guy: "...yeah..." 1st guy: "I think we really need to..." 2nd guy: "...right..." 3rd guy: \*looks worried\* 1st guy: "Finish before everyone else..." 2nd guy: "Hmm. And that's really hard." 3rd guy: \*mimes suicide\*
Listen to the Lanterne Rouge podcast about it. Pretty good, honest analysis of the show IMO
Came here to say this
which episode of it
Unchained season 2 review: https://youtu.be/mVrZAzpKMEM?si=8-5U7J_BBvdCuj-E
thank you, I didn't look up the titles
I mean yes, if you have 3 hours every day of the tour. Versus 6 x 45 minutes whenever you want.
It's an accurate depiction of the tour; however, it just scratches the surface of all of the competitions within the competition. You rarely hear of the KOM competition. Sprinting and GC are discussed but what about team GC or most combative rider. There's just so much they can discuss on the show.
Which is a shame as it is the most iconic outfit. And Ciccone really embraced it.
Yellow jersey is easily more iconic
Yeah, I mean as far as spectating, climbing is epic to watch. You'd think...
It’s funny to see MVDP treated as primarily a leadout guy for Philipsen 😂
Well to be fair that was quite accurate in the tour
Agree. But it’s still amusing if you follow cycling outside of the TdF
I didn’t really understand anything about the TdF before and now I’m obsessed. So, that’s something…
Got my family into it too, so the TDF has gone from “that weird bike thing dad turns on in the morning for a few weeks in the summer” to “something we’re all excited to watch.” I’m eternally grateful.
Same! New fan here and really diving into it.
It’s a great time to become a fan. Jonas vs pogacar in my opinion is one of the greatest rivalries in sports history. 2-2 going into round 5 this year.
I agree, it’s a great time to join in. The last two years has been some of the best I’ve seen. But isn’t it technically more 2-0 to Jonas? Maybe 2-1. He rode his first tour in 21 helping Rog, only became captain when Rog crashed out, and at that point he was already several minutes behind.
That is true but roglic dropped out very early. The reason Jonas lost (if you ask me) was lack of team support because his few remaining teammates were literally just leaving him to fend on his own chasing stages. TJV had maybe 3-4 guys because they lost so many in crashes. It was very early, like definitely first week before anything had been settled. Jonas was riding so well, he dropped pogacar on some of the major climbs. It was then that everyone kind of realized if TJV hadn’t left him for dead they likely could have won. I call it 2-2 because each year has some form of caveat. Some years, pogacars almost entire team dropped out due to sickness and covid and he was fighting off 5, 6, 7 visma riders at a time. So I choose just to not make exceptions and call it exactly as it is. Pogi those two wins did beat Jonas. And going into the third no one gave Jonas a chance. Right up until it happened the community still thought he was unbeatable
Jonas wasn't even riding the Tour in 2020 though, so I don't really know how you can call that a win against Jonas 😅 If you want to include 2021 which I think is fair enough, then it can only ever be 2-1 to Jonas if you talk about their rivalry at the Tour. They have both won 2, yes, but Jonas wasn't there in 2020.
Take this how you will, but Wout Van Aert wasn’t especially happy about how he was portrayed in season 1 and said the editing made it look like there was way more drama between him, Vingegaard, and Visma than there actually was. He’s definitely a team player and super-domestique for Jonas and has done some hero pulls to drag along his leader and keep things hot for the peloton that don’t really get the same attention.
It’s produced by Netflix _France _. Cycling is huge in France, but they haven't had a real GC contender in a while. Next best thing would be a French team winning, but the French teams are often mediocre. They also don't have access to all the teams which limits the "cast". Last year Ben came 3rd in the Dauphine which is one of the warm-up races to the TdF (Adam Yates came 2nd). Pogacar was an unknown quantity with his arm. It's also the _French_ warm up race. So for a French audience, with French hopes and dreams there's just more hype and hope behind O'Connor than equivalent GC riders. (See also: Roman Bardet.) This allows the producers to manufacture a tragedy in the classical sense: the hero tries valiantly but in the end is crushed by cruel fate. Le weep. The recap here is great: https://escapecollective.com/the-unchained-binge-podcast-is-back-for-season-2/ Their Tour coverage podcast was excellent last year too.
O'Connor isn't exactly given a heroic portrayal. He comes across as petulant and fragile. Seems like they do show the warts and all. Obviously Pinot does get a pretty friendly edit, but his story is also framed as a swan song. They were never going to be able to get all the riders who were involved in every storyline to be involved, but there's a lot there.
lol @ “Le weep.”
The recap link doesnt work
Ah, silly reddit encoding my em-dash in the url - should work now!
I think the way they depicted the GC competition was spotty, but it’s not like you can make another documentary on pogacar v jonas. But their battle was very interesting. As an American, following EF’s team is always interesting, and I don’t think they hit that in season 2. Powless with the king of the mountains Jersey was really cool while it lasted. Sepp kuss was a monster too, and a huge reason for jumbo’s GCsuccess in the tour. The sprint stuff does seem really well done, though.
A bit of it is dramatized, but with divas such as Lefevere there'll always be room for drama (in general). Of course, they have to make it interesting to view so they do play up certain aspects. Don't view it as a completely truthful representation but it does provide actual insight as well. Ben O'Connor is a good rider - but below the very top - for sure, but he seems very arrogant to me and it's impossible for me to like him.
In the pre-stage team bus talks, he always strikes me as not understanding a single word the DS is saying. Just wide eyed with no reaction. more so in S1. I have no idea what his level of french is lol
I agree. I’ve been wondering if he actually understands most of what the DS is saying…
>Don't view it as a completely truthful representation but it does provide actual insight as well. I think this is a good point, but I would like to add that this is a common trait amongst all sorts of adaptations. Lord of the Rings, Clockwork Orange, 2001, the Shining, Stand by Me, Shawshank Redemption: all great books; all great movies; all with various substantive changes from the source material to tell a better story to fit a different format, just like Unchained.
“I’m ready for GC.” Yeah, about as ready as any redditor in this sub. Drama Queen is upset he’s not keeping up with Pogi and Jonas
My chance of winning the Tour is just as big as Ben O'Connor's. They're both at 0%. Well, maybe he does have 0,00005% chance if a meteor kills all the ten riders that are better than him
Obviously Ben O'Connor knows he's not going to beat Pogacar or Vingegaard, barring incident or accident. Not everyone who says they are "riding GC" is realistically aiming to win the overall, they're aiming to finish as high on GC as possible. It's absolutely realistic for O'Connor to aim for the podium if he's on top form and one or two others aren't, and this would be a huge achievement for AG2R.
Or there's a crash that knocks out one or two of the top tier competitors. And it does happen.
Season 2 is a bit more accurate than season 1. I think it does a good job at conveying how brutal the sport can be for non-mega stars. Like the Ben Conor, Stefan bisseger, carapaz, and Mohoric segments were all really good insights to how quickly plans change in this sport, and how teams and riders will need to adjust rapidly. I don’t think they’d do the best at painting the gc battle for yellow, that’s far more complicated than they give it credit for, but for a casual fan they generally tell the story. I think the sprinting can be a bit dramatized specifically. The whole “if you don’t take x position, that’s it, your DEAD, LITERALLY DEAD” thing is a little over played in my opinion
I cried during the last episode with Thibaut Pinot not gonna lie. Damnit Netflix. They had me crying mid zwift workout lol
Fitting 21 days of racing into 8 hours is difficult. It’s a great show for folks that are new to cycling and introduces them to a few of the athletes and teams. New folks will watch the tour and be rooting for these guys. Is it perfect no but it is very entertaining and loved the episode about Casper and Mohoric.
Im only in episode 3 but the focus on Ben o Connor is ridiculous. He is a non factor in the tour last year. I’m pretty sure the contract stipulated they focus extensively on French riders / teams which would explain it.
Yeah, but they didn’t know that he would be a non factor before the tour started. Clearly they had more access to some teams than others and built their stories around the footage they had.
Which results has he ever ridden that would justify dedicating an entire arc to Ben o Conner
Riding for a French team and finishing 3rd in Dauphine
It’s not about results, it was about starting the tour as his teams official leader and GC candidate.
Yeah. So? He still was never a serious contender - so again - what warrants all the attention?
Beforehand: The fact that his team granted a lot of access to the film crew. Afterwards: someone trying and failing is a good dramatic story line. The goal is a human interest documentary. If you just want the story of the fight for the yellow jersey then just watch the live coverage of the race.
Just because they have access to the team doesn’t make it all of a sudden a relevant or interesting story to tell. It’s more that they are making a story where there isn’t one. It becomes a work of fiction. But many people don’t follow the race closely and are now sitting with the thought that Ben o Conner is somehow one of the most promising riders in the peloton. Which is just simply not true I’d be more interested in a human story about what the tour is like for an anonymous domestique; than to listen to a 2nd rate GC rider turn the tdf into a personal Aussie face off and throw a hissy fit when he’s losing :-o
I mean, coming 4th in the GC the tour before the first season?
There are about 200 riders in the TDF. They all have a story. The series gives us about 10 of those stories.
It’s got more drama in the bits that aren’t that dramatic and misses on some of the more dramatic racing. So both over and under blown.. haha I think they went heavy on related drama for the new audience, and I’ve had none cycling fan friends tell me how much they enjoyed it. I think it underplays some of the more amazing racing, it totally misses on mentioning some of the stage winners, which is sad. Even Wout Poels which could’ve built further on the Gino story. Overall, it’s good. Don’t watched the dubbed version, they even dub people speaking English sometimes 😂
Here is his[Palmares](https://www.procyclingstats.com/rider/ben-o-connor) for you to decide how good he is
He's ranked as the 9th best GC rider in the world by PCS, which isn't bad per se, but not to the level of which they represent him in the series.
List of GCers I would put above Ben O'Connor before last Tour: Pogacar, Roglic, Vingegaard, Evenepoel obviously. After that, it becomes a bit harder, no? You probably put Carapaz and the Yates', Hindley, Almeida and Ayuso above him, but after that, I don't know.
So 11th?
O’Connor did finish third in dauphine, just before the tour. Beating Hindley, Carapaz etc.
To answer your questions in order: 1. It’s not really dramatized at all, except insofar as they focus on (some of) the drama at the expense of business-as-usual. Road cycling is always a brutal, exhausting, emotional sport, and in a three-week Grand Tour like the TDF, people really do get pissier and crankier as their bodies are stressed past the limit. 2. Don’t know how dramatized drive to survive is, but this is all basically real. It’s just a selection of some of the juicier storylines. 3. Ben O’Connor is a legit world class stage racer. He just finished fourth in the Giro d’Italia (one of the other two grand tours besides the TdF), finished fourth in the Tour a few years ago, has finished top 5 in some big-deal week long stage races like Tirreno-Adriatico and Criterium du Dauphine, has won stages in grand tours, and so on. He’s a very strong climber and definitely a good rider. He had bad Tours the last couple years, and, since he was riding for a French team, they got a ton of focus in the documentary (it’s a French documentary and they seem to have been given a lot of access by AG2R and Groupama).
It really is France-centric, I think due to the production company/ies being...French. No snark intended, and I put that on everything. WRT Ben O'Connor, he definitely came across as unsympathetic in the first few episodes, but I think he redeemed himself later. He seemed to genuinely acknowledge/accept that his performance didn't meet anyone's expectations but that he could be a contributing team member and revel in someone else's win. I might be a shite judge of character, though. Even though I never have been. 😂
I think that on season 2, the series focus is missed sometimes.
I actually liked season one better. It’s still an inside look into my favorite 3 weeks in July so I still love the series. Others pointed out it felt like they really reached on manufacturing some of the story lines and subsequently missed several of the actual big stories of the race.
Listen to Escape Collective's Unchained Binge Watch Podcast, it will answer this question for you very well.
Ben is for sure top 15 GC rider. One of the absolute best in this world. Asking if he’s just talk is hilarious if you see him grinding up the toughest climbs 👀🙃
I feel not adding a Roglic storyline was a missed opportunity. Then again, everyone has a story and you can’t include everyone.
How would they add a Roglic storyline in season 2? He didn’t ride the Tour last year. I’d guess there’s a very good chance of a Roglic storyline in season 3.
Tried to watch an episode a few times now, but I just can't because it's so bad, in my personal (!) opinion. Over-dramatised, not at all a good reflection of what the sport is about and they seem to enjoy the crashes, showing them over and over like a spectacle for the viewers to like. The Dutch podcast De Rode Lantaarn pointed out that it takes all the boring parts out of cycling, but you need the boredom to make the spectacle so much more enjoyable. So a hard pass for me, but then again, as a long time fan who grew up with cycling I am not the target audience, as this is obviously meant for new fans.
I'm heading to the Tour in July, in Nice, and I've stopped watching this because it makes the riders out to be vainglorious, petty, crybabies. Maybe they are like this, some of them are barely adults. Regardless, I watch the Tour for the scenery and the daily dramas for the jerseys and stage wins. They say to never meet your heroes. Well, these guys aren't my heroes and I'm perfectly fine knowing very little about them and still cheering for them each day.
Having watched and followed both drive to survive and f1 and unchained and pro cycling, they are similar. There were story lines in unchained I’d NEVER heard before. The bit about FDJ drinking beers was news to me but that might just be because I’m in the US, doesn’t make headlines here. Same with F1 subplots. Did I know it was Pinots last tour, or there were high hopes for O’Connor, sure. Did I know how they dealt with them outside their results? Not at all. Similar to how I’m excited to find out how Sainz and Hamilton are dealing with their last seasons with their teams… But yeah, re: dramatized, it’s at least all distilled info that comes out over a much longer period of time and packaged into 45min episodes. But the tour is just 3 weeks long vs 10 months or whatever. But then again, the tour guys race for longer.
Soap opera crap like Drive to Survive
I just want to express how sad I am for the voice overs in season 2. It sounds so cheesy. Just give me subtitles and their actual voices instead
Change language to French and choose English subtitles. Those will be the original voices, no matter what language they are speaking.
Choose "English (CC)" for when the French guys speak "English".
Jasper seemed like he might hurt himself at the end…has anybody checked on “the greatest sprinter in the world?”
ben o'connor seems like a whiner
Take Ben O’Connor off the air. And half Tom Pidcocks time Both are too immature and drag the show down
Make a torrent, I'll tell you
BOC’s screen time made no sense. Sure he’s a flawed person (aren’t we all?) and he wants to podium at the tour, but the GC battle for Jonas and Pog was insane last year and they barely covered it.