To understand the social reaction of the French in the post war period you need to look at their reaction during the war.

As you probably know France was crushed by the Wehrmacht during the Battle of France in 1940. This defeat left a terrible mark in the memory of the French governing elites, even on those ruling after the libération of France by the Allied forces and the French resistance (the Force Françaises de l’intérieur lead by de Gaulle and the Francs Tireurs & Partisans lead by the communists).

Now after the war the French population was exhausted but the elites felt that they needed to avenge the defeat of WW2 and they felt the need to save the honour by keeping their colonial holdings. For that reason when a « rébellion » happened in French Indochina they were prompt to send the army to crush them (ironically the Foreign Legion, composed with now a lot of former Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS was sent there).

The French public never really cared about the war until one point : The battle of Dien Bien Phu. To summarise it, the French forces were surrounded by the Vietnamese forces and faced a long and bloody siege that was heavily broadcasted on French media, this attracted the attention of the population and everyday people listened to the radio to hear about the evolution of the siege. In the end the French forces were defeated but not without a heroic fight. This was a terrible shock for the French population that really discovered this war via and during this siege and the defeat awoke the memories of the defeat of 1940 and had huge consequences on the next indépendance war : The guerre d’Algérie (Algerian indépendance war).

During this latter war the whole of the French population followed the progress of the war much more rigorously and the Guerre d’Algerie really marked the French memory for the gap it created within France and the idea of not repeating Dien Bien Phu was still present in the memory of some.

To summarise again, the Indochina War and the lack of attention and coverage it received marked the French public opinion and therefore brought much more attention to the Guerre d’Algerie when it started.

Nowadays the war of Indochina is unknown and even the French colonisation in Asia is barely, if not, seen in class. In comparison the memory of the Guerre d’Algerie is still much more vivid and a hot topic to talk about, even though it is barely studied in class. This memory of the Guerre d’Algerie is so vivid « thanks » to the shock provoked by the late discovery of the situation in Indochina and the attention that it brought to later wars of independence.

Will edit for sources in a minute.

ÉDIT : Source : Diên Biên Phu by Pierre Pellissier (Written in French). Oh and it is 6am here in Germany, my apologies for the typos I will try to correct them when I wake up again!

Follow up question if I may - I'm also watching this series, and in the first episode, the narrator makes the statement that after World War II and the defeat of the occupying Japanese Imperial Army, France demanded the restoration of their authority in their Indochinese colonies, and threatened to align with the Soviet sphere of influence in Europe if the U.S. opposed them. Ho Chi Minh and other Vietnamese leaders who had fought the Japanese were hoping for the U.S. to recognize Vietnamese independence, which the U.S. had considered but opposed due to French demands.

I had never heard the claim of French threats of Soviet alignment before, and the series doesn't give any more detail or sources. Can anyone shed more light on this, or point me to a good essay on the matter?