The series Tomorrow Is Ours, broadcast on TF1 since 2017, places the city of Sète at the center of each episode. Canals, colorful facades, fine sandy beaches: the Mediterranean backdrop contributes as much to the plot as the characters themselves. Behind this postcard lies a well-established filming logistics, shared between outdoor locations in Sète, converted studios, and occasional shoots outside of Hérault.
Sète as a training ground for film schools
Have you noticed the fluidity of the outdoor shots in Tomorrow Is Ours? This technical quality is partly explained by a lesser-known aspect of the filming. The Sète set of the series also serves as an immersion ground for film students.
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ENS Louis-Lumière organized an immersion directly on the set of Tomorrow Is Ours in Sète. The goal: to place its students as close as possible to the technical teams, in real daily production conditions. The filming of Tomorrow Is Ours also serves as an educational tool for future generations of audiovisual technicians.
This initiative goes beyond a simple studio visit. Students observe the pace imposed by a daily soap opera, where each filming day produces a significant volume of sequences.
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Working outdoors in the streets of Sète, with the natural Mediterranean light and the sound constraints of a lively city, constitutes an exercise that schools cannot replicate in a studio. To understand where Tomorrow Is Ours is filmed, one must look beyond the simple sets: it is a complete professional ecosystem.
Sète studios and Parisian set: the dual geography of filming
The majority of viewers associate Tomorrow Is Ours with Sète, and this is legitimate. The outdoor scenes of the series, filmed in the city, give the soap opera its visual identity. But part of the production relies on studios in the Paris region, notably in La Plaine Saint-Denis.
This geographical distribution responds to specific logistical constraints. Sète hosts the outdoor scenes and some recurring indoor sets of the series: character apartments, police station, hospital.
Why also film in Île-de-France
Filming a daily soap opera requires producing episodes at a sustained pace. Having additional studios near Paris allows for certain sequences to be filmed in parallel, without mobilizing the entire team in Sète. This dual-site organization accelerates post-production and offers a flexibility that few French daily series can afford.
The result on screen remains coherent because the art direction unifies the sets. A viewer does not always distinguish what was filmed in Hérault from what was captured in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Occasional shoots outside of Sète: when Tomorrow Is Ours explores other cities
The series does not remain confined to a single perimeter. Several recent episodes have been filmed in municipalities outside of Sète, sometimes even outside the Occitanie region.
- Noirmoutier-en-l’Île hosted filming crews, temporarily transforming the Vendée municipality into a set for the series.
These relocations are not anecdotal. They allow the writers to renew the plots by offering new visual environments.
A choice of locations guided by the script
Each move outside of Sète corresponds to a specific narrative arc. The production does not choose a city for its tourist appeal but for its ability to serve the story. The architecture, light, and atmosphere of the location must match the tone of the ongoing plot.
This approach distinguishes Tomorrow Is Ours from many daily soap operas that remain fixed in a unique set. The geographical mobility of the filming enriches the visual diversity of the series and maintains the attention of loyal viewers.
Real sets of Sète transformed by fiction
Sète offers the series a catalog of authentic locations repurposed by the production. Why use real buildings instead of recreating everything in a studio? The answer lies in one word: authenticity. The facades, light, and texture of Sète’s walls are impossible to reproduce artificially. Filming in the city gives the scenes a visual texture that viewers perceive, even unconsciously.
The Haut district, with its sloping alleys and tightly packed houses, hosts shots of some character apartments. These places exist independently of the series, allowing visitors to easily find them.
- Chloé’s house, one of the permanent outdoor sets, is located in a residential neighborhood accessible on foot.
- Some character houses are only used for illustrative shots, with interiors filmed in the studio.
This overlap between fiction and reality makes Sète a popular destination for fans of the series. Walking through the city means recognizing a familiar set at every street corner, embedded in a very real urban fabric.
Tomorrow Is Ours remains a series deeply linked to Sète, but its filming geography now extends well beyond the Hérault canals. Between Parisian studios, occasional shoots in other regions, and educational immersions on set, TF1’s daily soap opera mobilizes a logistics that far exceeds the framework of a simple Mediterranean postcard.