What would a 'drive to survive' Premier League series look like?

What would a 'drive to survive' Premier League series look like?

By Tom Masters

Recently, we have seen more and more calls for the Premier League to bring in a documentary around the entire league. 

Formula One’s 2019 Netflix documentary Drive to Survive captured all the drama, emotion and passion of the F1 season and was extremely popular among both fans of the sport and people who had never watched a race in their lives.  

The Premier League has reached a level of popularity that it seems slightly bizarre that there has not been a documentary around the whole league.  

We have seen Amazon Prime’s All or Nothing documentaries with Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and this season it will be Arsenal, but as of yet we have not got a whole league documentary.  

With the success of the Formula One Drive to Survive, we look at how a Premier League equivalent to ‘Drive to Survive’ might look.  

Grand Prix vs Premier League game week  

One of the fundamental differences between F1 and the Premier League is the location of each Grand Prix compared to a Premier League game week.  

With an F1 race, all the drivers participating in that race will be in the same place at the same time, making capturing footage easy, as you can follow the F1 season and know that all the action will be where you are.  

Obviously with a Premier League season, this is not the case. Ten different grounds across the country at different times across the whole weekend from a Friday evening to a Monday evening.  

Having to report from Newcastle to Southampton and in between would require a lot of cameramen.  

In terms of match footage, and even player and manager interviews, this would not be a problem as it would be taken care of anyway, the Premier League highlights on YouTube are exceptional.  

But the stuff that really catches people’s attention, and draws in large audiences, is the behind-the-scenes footage.  

We have seen a different side to the likes of Pep Guardiola, José Mourinho and Harry Kane in the All or Nothing documentaries that have come out.  

This would require extra filming, both in the dressing room, on the training pitch in between matches and potentially some players outside of football.  

Episodes  

Formula One’s Drive to Survive has now had three seasons of ten episodes since it first aired in March 2019.  

The way their 30-minute episodes work would certainly transfer to the Premier League, with each episode more or less focusing on one team in Drive to Survive, something which would work well in a Premier League version.  

It could for example, follow a team over a week building up to a big game and including match highlights and post-match reaction, as well as that all important behind the scenes footage.  

Whether that would mean a 20-episode season (which would be watched by many football fans despite the length) or multiple seasons would have to be seen.  

Teams followed  

One thing that seemed to grip so many people about the F1 Drive to Survive documentary was that the majority of the episodes did not follow the big names or teams.  

Lewis Hamilton did not have the main role in any episode until midway through season 2 for example, with many episodes focused on the lesser teams and the battle for the middle places.  

This is something that the Premier League version could also thrive with, but in reality, the most supported teams are those in the ‘Big Six’ such as Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal.  

Thus, a good way for the show to work in terms of episodes could be to include every team, but perhaps with a focus on the lesser teams as there is a lot known about them already, while three of the ‘Big Six’ teams already have a documentary of their own.  

If you were to start with, say Newcastle United, Leeds United, West Ham United and Everton, four extremely well supported teams, that would follow in the footsteps of Drive to Survive’s success.  

Could it work?  

There is absolutely no reason a Drive to Survive style documentary in the Premier league would be anything other than a success.  

In a similar vain to F1, there are always different stories, subplots, success stories and failures every season, while with the relegation and promotion, there is the potential to include three new teams each year too.  

Football is the most popular sport in the country, as well as the world, and with the previous success of those aforementioned Amazon Prime documentaries as well as the likes of Netflix’s Sunderland till I die documentary, if such a show were to exist it would be extremely welcomed by fans, whilst teams would no doubt benefit too.   

PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES