Has guitar, will travel

In a single take, 'One Shot' follows Ed Sheeran as he roams Manhattan.

- MIKAEL WOOD POP MUSIC CRITIC

THE RAW approach appealed to Ed Sheeran.

The idea of a concert special didn’t exactly light up Ed Sheeran’s mind.

“Every time it was pitched to me, I just wasn’t excited,” says the English singer and songwriter who's spent the last decade or so among the world’s top touring acts. “ ‘We could do this theater and this town and this ...’ — it was like, 'I've seen that before.’ ”

But then Sheeran got a call from Ben Winston, the Emmy-winning producer and director known for his role overseeing the Grammy Awards and as a creator of James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” series.

Actually, it was an email, Winston points out.

“You can't call Ed because he doesn't have a phone," he says. "You have to email him and hope he FaceTimes you back from his iPad." Winston's pitch earlier this year was simple but intriguing: What if they took the one-shot approach that helped make Netflix's "Adolescence" such a sensation and used it to film a performance by Sheeran - not simply onstage but as he goes on a journey somewhere? And instead of getting a director "kind of like the guy who shot 'Adolescence," " as Winston recalls putting it, "Why don't we just ask the guy who shot 'Adolescence'?" Sheeran liked the idea; so did Philip Barantini, who won two Emmys in September for directing that acclaimed miniseries about a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a female classmate.