Cheekier viewers than me might wonder how this Disney+ documentary is going to manage to fill out an entire four-part series about the singer. Sheeran is massive, the biggest male pop star in the world, capable of selling out – as he does here – Wembley Stadium for the 12th time. Each of his albums goes to No 1; he’s played at practically every massive arena in the world. He sings with Eminem on stage; Beyoncé will perform with him. But if you only know about his life from the tabloids, or by gossip osmosis, you might know he has a pub, that he married a school friend, that he still lives in Suffolk, and has a pond that was briefly controversial. As a star, he is not so much champagne as he is pale ale. He has a homely quality to him.
This homeliness belies a certain unknown aspect, though. Not unknown in the Beyoncé way, with that distant remove of a glossy machine, but unknown in the sense that his normal-guy shtick might be the extent of it. We see him as a hard worker done good. He appears to be a very nice man. The documentary – which, again, cheekier viewers might note, coincides with a high-profile court case against him, and does much to make him seem even more human and likable – foregrounds the unknown man, via the people who do know and love him, including his wife, Cherry, and his parents, John and Imogen.
