"Les Coulisses De L'Exploit" was a French television program of sports information created by Jacques Goddet and Raymond Marcillac, and broadcast on RTF Television then on the first channel of the ORTF from December 13, 1961 to August 16, 1972. The principle of this program is to report on sports news but also to meet men and women performing exceptional feats. According to Raymond Marcillac: "Competitive sport is not our only field of action. It never has been. We want to discover beings whose life is enriching, exhilarating; men who have accomplished acts that can be offered to our admiration without reluctance."
This historic mini-series is set just after the execution of Louis XVI and follows the actions of a group of loyal royalists, led by the Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. His goal is to free Queen Marie-Antoinette and the young King Louis XVII, but he runs into the brutal jailer Simon who makes sure to thwart any attempt to escape.
A secondary plot line deals with the feelings of Lindet, the lieutenant of the national guard, towards Geneviève, the young protege of the royalist Morand, which for the sans-culottes is a crime in itself.
During the American Civil War, five prisoners of war manage to escape in a balloon. They are driven far across the sea to an unknown island, far from civilization. The legendary captain Nemo (world star Omar Sharif), who is trapped in a huge underground cave with his submarine Nautilus, watches the group. When the stranded people are discovered by pirates, Nemo helps them with a host of his super technology...