Netflix’s motor-racing extravaganza is one of the most influential shows of the decade. How did it turn such a tedious sport into such gripping television?
Tennis has Break Point. Rugby union has Six Nations: Full Contact. Nascar has Full Speed. Golf has Full Swing. Basketball has Starting 5. Cycling has Tour de France: Unchained. American football has both Quarterback and Receiver. Athletics has Sprint. What do all these documentaries have in common? They have all sprung up in the past five years or so, and are basically all the same show: if they are not full clones of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, they are heavily inspired by it.
Drive to Survive thus has a claim to be one of the most influential TV documentaries of the past decade, having pioneered a simple but effective format. Every 12 months since 2019, it has delivered a new season – last week it released the seventh – that recaps what happened in the previous year’s F1 championship, using behind-the-scenes access, race-day footage and retrospective interviews.