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.
