UK TV in France
My opinion :- freeview will not work, Freesat will work (transmitted via Sky (Astra2D satellite) with a Sky provided one-off-payment Freesat subscriber card) with a Sat dish and suitable decoder (Sky-box ? )ordered from and paid for via a UK address
My experience (fact) :- Sat dish -> co-ax -> Sky box -> Scart cable -> Toshiba DVR-40 DVD/VCR recorder/player purchased in France -> Scart cable -> Sony trinitron 19" crt TV purchased in UK.
With this set-up DVDs purchased in both UK and France work perfectly (select English audio track on French-bought DVDs), I have not come across any US/UK film titles bought in France (from Amazon fr and sent from Amazon dot co dot uk) that don't, as do VHS cassettes recorded in UK, and VHS cassettes transferred from a VHS cam-corder.
The fuss over Sky outside UK appears to be based on Sky's licensing payments for transmitting films and BBC (UK TV license-payers) programmes, obviously it costs Sky less for film broadcast rights for UK-only than it would for a Europe-wide license and thus they are obliged to pay (at least token) respect to this.
HTH
DaveD