From the producer of Senna and Amy comes one of the best sports documentary series in years...
Considering we’re all spending a lot of time indoors these days, the JOE team has picked out viewing recommendations for TV series, old and new, to get stuck into to keep boredom at bay. Title: Formula One: Drive to Survive
Where can you watch it? Netflix
Number of seasons/episodes: Two seasons, 10 episodes per season.
IMDB rating: 8.6/10
Why you should watch it: Like the best movies, TV shows and documentaries about sport, you don’t have to be very interested in Formula One to enjoy Drive to Survive.
It helps, of course, but you don't need to be a fanatic to get a kick out of what makes Drive to Survive so compelling; the drama and the ever-present tension that exists in Formula One, both between rival teams and drivers but even more presciently, within the teams themselves.
At any one time, only 20 people in the entire world get to be a Formula One driver and you don’t get to be one unless you are ultra-competitive, completely ruthless and prepared to be cutthroat and lose a few friends in the pit lane along the way.
Over the course of the two seasons, the drama and tension manifests more so in the mid and lower-ranked teams than in the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes at the top, both of whom opted out of Season 1 but wisely decided to get in on the act second time around.
Unlike coverage of actual Formula 1 events, which can last for hours on end given the nature of qualifying and the races themselves, no episode of Drive to Survive lasts for more than 40 minutes and the temptation not to binge large parts of it in one sitting will test even the most strong-willed of viewers.
Of all the new series available on Netflix in 2020, Drive to Survive is worthy of at least a podium finish, if not the top spot itself.
