This year's Tour had drama because the two principle actors, particularly one ( bless his soul), put on a real show. With Pog you are gauranteed fireworks, especially if he is put on the back foot or even, to his disadvantage, he feels the need to gain time or simply just attack, because, well, why not!? Then there was a pretty well designed pavé stage, which lends itself to high drama on the road.
Unfortunately, despite appreciating pmans' enthusiasm for cycling, I can't agree with the premise that Prudhomme has designed a route for Pog and Vingo and not for French riders like Gaudu and Bardet. At any rate, even if the former were the case, it is a poorly designed route for Pog and Vingo and the race itself I think. Both can TT, it is said, so then give them some TTs worthy of that skill and indeed the Tour itself. Notwithstanding recent trends and the logic behind them, namely TTs suffocate the race and that too long of stages and less rest days invite doping; leaving out the latter assertions, which can't be discussed here, a proper length TT (preferably at the end of the first week) will force riders to expose any weakness. This, in turn, will have to be compensated by gaining back time through attacking in the mountains.
And even were Pog and Vingo to finish close in such a TT, who thus might or might not bide their time in the mountains to win the race, waiting till the last km to put in a seering accelleration or conversely more boldly attacking from further out, the climbers who can't TT like Hindley would have to implement an aggressive racing strategy. Either way some folks can't just sit still and this opens the racing to interesting scenarios. By contrast, appart from a 20 odd km TT being stuff of the Giro, not the Tour, its short length keeps more or less everyone together, which will make Pog and Vingo, but also the pure climbers, think twice about attacking from afar and risk losing the Tour, the podium or dropping out of the top 10.
Conversely a longer TT likely results in larger time gaps between riders, which causes the need for more aggressive racing to net the win, the podium or finish top 10 depending on what's realistic. Look at the 89 Tour as an example, which had a prologue, a 73 km TT, a MTT in the Alpes and then the famous race against the clock the last day. It also had two evenly matched heavyweights in Fignon and Lemond relentlessly exchanging blows, putting Lemond against the ropes late in the match. But then sensationally, and against all odds, Lemond landed the knock-out blow sending Fignon definitively down in the closing moments of the last round (because it was a TT). Add the fact that the best climber, Delgado, because of much TTing and his own prologue debacle, was forced to race aggressively in the mountains; and you had a great and fascinating Tour from start to finish.
That's why I say with the current crop of stars, it's time to bring back those 80s type of Tours, with proper length TTs, multiple 230-250+ stages, mountains with several high cols in both the Pyrennes and the Alpes to create drama and test their mettle. None of this lily-livered stuff they are serving up now.