BBC drops Ozzy Osbourne documentary from schedule with new date to be announced

By Casey Cooper-Fiske, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

The BBC has dropped its Ozzy Osbourne documentary from Monday’s schedule with a new air date to be announced.

Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home was due to be shown on BBC One at 9pm but has now been replaced with an episode of Fake Or Fortune?, with no reason given for the change in schedule.

A BBC spokesperson said: “The film has moved in the schedules and we’ll confirm new TX (transmission) details in due course.”

The hour-long documentary will show the late Black Sabbath frontman reuniting with the band on stage as part of The Back To The Beginning farewell concert in Birmingham, which he died just weeks after, aged 76 on July 22nd from a reported heart attack.

Ozzy Osbourne death
Fans gathered in Birmingham last month to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne (Joe Giddens/PA) Photo by Joe Giddens

The film was originally conceived as a series, announced in 2022 and called Home To Roost, and was to document Osbourne and his wife Sharon’s move back from the US, where they had lived for more than two decades, to rural Buckinghamshire.

But the project “evolved as Ozzy’s health deteriorated” into the one-hour film, the BBC said.

The BBC says the documentary sees the story of the concert told through “unique and intimate access to the whole Osbourne family”, including Sharon, and their children, Kelly and Jack.

It was filmed over three years and “captures the extraordinary rollercoaster of their lives” as the famous couple “attempt to complete their long-held dream of moving back to the UK”, the BBC has said.

Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home also captures the musician as he “heroically battles to get fit enough to perform” and the family dealing with “the dramatic consequences of his ill health”, with Kelly quoted as saying in the film: “Iron Man wasn’t really made of iron.”

Jack, Sharon and Kelly Osbourne view the messages and floral tributes left at the Black Sabbath Bridge bench on Broad Street in Birmingham in memory of Black Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne
Jack, left to right, Sharon and Kelly Osbourne view messages and floral tributes left at the Black Sabbath bench in Birmingham (Joe Giddens/PA) Photo by Joe Giddens

The rocker had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019.

Last month, fans gathered alongside Osbourne’s family to pay tribute to the star as a funeral cortege travelled through Birmingham.

Sharon and the couple’s children could be seen wiping away tears when they arrived at the Black Sabbath bench, where thousands of tributes, balloons and flowers were left.

Musicians from Bostin Brass played Black Sabbath songs to accompany the cortege, and fans threw flowers at the hearse as it passed slowly through the city.