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There are people who’ll hate seeing Ozzy Osbourne the way that he is in No Escape From Now. Directed by Gogglebox and Undercover Boss alum Tania Alexander, the film has no interest in the mythological Prince Of Darkness persona that generations of metalheads have attached themselves to. There’s no discussion of that time he drunkenly urinated on the Alamo cenotaph and only a passing mention of the gig where he bit the head off a bat.
Instead, Paramount Plus’s new documentary seeks to understand John Michael Osbourne, the working-class kid from Aston who defied all odds to become a rock star, and finds him towards the end of his life: living with the effects of Parkinson’s disease and the constant pain caused by multiple, aggressive spinal surgeries.
Chronicling the six years between a bedroom fall that broke Ozzy’s neck and his retirement concert and death in July 2025, Alexander enjoys near-total access to the singer’s life. She films inside his home and interviews him, his wife/manager Sharon (who executive-produces) and all three of their children, as well as friends, producers and fellow rock icons. There’s also behind-the-scenes footage of the most high-profile moments of Ozzy’s final years, including his 2022 Commonwealth Games closing ceremony performance, his 2024 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction and his swansong show.
However, the most revelatory moments come in between. Ozzy darts between yes and no on every big opportunity offered to him, and Alexander does an insightful job not just connecting this to the depression he felt because of his sickness and 2023 touring retirement, but delving back even further. She unearths a childhood where the future Black Sabbath frontman was constantly told he couldn’t do things, be it by his school bullies or his family; those naysaying voices persist in Ozzy’s head as what he calls ‘the committee’.
Plus, Alexander contextualises the albums that Ozzy made post-fall, 2020’s Ordinary Man and 2022’s Patient Number 9, and makes them even greater monuments to the singer’s passion for music. The days where he got to go into the studio with producer Andrew Watt were when he woke up the happiest, Sharon says. The theme of insanity on the Patient… album wasn’t just Ozzy tapping into the version of himself he presented on 1981’s Diary Of A Madman; it was him scratching against the walls of his own home, where, in one of the documentary’s especially candid moments, he admits he’s maddeningly under constant watch from his family and personal trainers.
Although Alexander deals in plenty of honesty and raw coverage, there are parts that come with awkward-feeling artifice. Ozzy and the family’s recollection of the singer’s fall is accompanied by the kind of wobbling POV shots, stock ‘ominous’ soundtrack and faux-cataclysmic bangs usually reserved for reenactments in Unsolved Mysteries. Later, in a confusing display of emotional whiplash, a victorious shot of Ozzy beaming onstage during his final show abruptly jump-cuts to footage of his funeral cortège.
No Escape From Now was not intended to be a posthumous film, which may explain its occasionally rough-around-the-edges delivery, but missteps aside, it’s a moving coda to its subject’s life. It documents Ozzy’s final years while touching upon so much more, illustrating how the same personality traits that brought him to the frontier of heavy metal tortured him when he couldn’t do it anymore. Some fans might find it difficult, but many more will find it fascinating.
Ozzy: No Escape From Now starts streaming on Paramount Plus on Tuesday, October 7.
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