3 hours ago
4
As sad as it was, there was something undeniably poetic about Ozzy Osbourne’s death in July, 17 days after his final performance with Black Sabbath in their native Birmingham, and only four months after he moved back to the UK. Consider Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home the explanatory notes accompanying that eerie, strangely elegant verse; a documentary following the rock icon’s final months as he reflects on his life, roots, work, ill-health and impending death. As for that last one, the 76-year-old didn’t believe in heaven or hell. And he was incandescent at the prospect of dying in his adopted home of America and lying for eternity in a “McDonald’s version of a cemetery”.
Ozzy had been suffering from a slow-progressing form of Parkinson’s disease for the past two decades, which in conjunction with a 2019 spinal injury significantly impeded his ability to walk. Yet he died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Evidently, this programme was not meant to be a record of his final days. Instead, this amusing, absorbing hour-long film has been salvaged from material filmed for a 10-part fly-on-the-wall series about Sharon and Ozzy’s decision to leave LA and return to their old house in Buckinghamshire, which began production in 2022. Skipping across the years, the timeline feels a little fudged, but the makers have managed to pull together an intelligible story revolving around the pair’s preparations for the big move: the renovation of their country pile, Welders (a gigantic new lake is required, natch), the packing, the goodbyes.
As such, everything is drenched in a devastating dramatic irony. Sharon heralding the pair’s “last chapter” together in England, and later looking lost in Ozzy’s study on a solo visit to the UK (“it’s just strange he’s not here”). Ozzy experiencing a gravitational pull back to the motherland; clearly a desire to escape the US before it’s too late. (“I never wanted to be American,” he claims, after the camera has lingered over the royal commemorative china on display in his LA mansion. What is he looking forward to about a British summer? “Wimbledon” is his irreverently off-brand answer.) Then there’s Ozzy dwelling on the existential necessity of performing live: he needs the audience “like air,” he explains, as his final gig looms.
Oddly enough, it’s not only his music career that ended up coming full circle. In his second act as a pioneering reality star, the bat-chomping, luxuriantly bouffanted Prince of Darkness was replaced by a bewildered and (as he later admitted) perpetually stoned patriarch shuffling round a chaotic household. Comfortingly, much of this documentary strongly recalls The Osbournes, despite it being 20 years since the reality sitcom ended. The hallmarks are all here: the performative relatability and no-bullshit candour (Sharon: “We’re loud, we’re outspoken, but we’re quite normal”; Ozzy: “I wouldn’t say we’re fucking normal!”); the shifting sands of Jack and Kelly’s transatlantic accents; the foul-mouthed tirades; the constant, nauseating dog-fouling. Seasoned reality pros, the lot – even the pets know how to deliver nostalgic high jinks.
This retooled documentary was meant to air in August, but was pulled from the schedules at the last minute at the behest of the family. The timing was obviously an issue – it would have been broadcast less than a month after Ozzy died – but it’s unclear if umbrage was taken with the contents, too, or if anything has been changed. Well, except for the title: it was originally listed as Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home.
This version certainly hammers home the bond between Ozzy and Sharon: rather than a tribute to his career, the focus is on his relationship with his wife of 43 years, who comes across as a model of patience and tolerance; a beloved (grand)mother and devoted wife who struggles to balance the demands of both roles (her husband wants to return to England; Jack and Kelly feel their parents should remain near their offspring). Ozzy is characteristically frank about his infidelities and drug and alcohol use, and praises Sharon’s loyalty. He says, not for the first time, that he can’t live without her.
In the final scene, footage of Ozzy’s funeral procession through the streets of Birmingham is overlaid with his own voiceover. “It’s been a great life,” he insists, in his trademark matter-of-fact Brummie style. “I wouldn’t change a damn thing.” I cried. This could quite easily have added up to a rather distasteful documentary: an attempt to control the narrative by his loved ones; an attempt to capitalise on a megastar’s death via a serendipitous TV commission; the repurposing of a dead man’s words to schmaltzy effect. But somehow it doesn’t feel cheap. Don’t go into this programme expecting an unsanitised deep dive into Ozzy’s life and work – instead appreciate this compellingly intimate and extremely moving farewell.
Sharon & Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
