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In one of the very first scenes in the new TV series about his life, Sergio Ramos sits alone in a changing room.

Dramatic music swells.

He is, in a manner somehow both inexplicable and inevitable, shirtless. His muscles glisten in the half-light.

It is a cinematic opening.

Unfortunately, it is also about as revealing as this documentary gets.

Over the remainder of episode one, we are presented with an array of carefully stage-managed vignettes. There’s Sergio cutting up fruit. Sergio driving home late at night. Sergio posing for selfies with his children. Sergio dressed like an extra from Peaky Blinders, striding up a hill.

Why?

Best leave those questions at the door, friend.

There are conversations, too, nearly all of which seem scripted.

Imagine an episode of The Hills, only with Ramos in the Lauren Conrad role and no-one with even a 10th of the slow-burn gruesomeness of Spencer Pratt, and you’re pretty much there. It is two parts lifestyle porn – Ramos’ house really is very nice – and one part soap opera. Except, of course, things actually happen in soap operas.

Football plays a part but not an interesting one, despite the fact that the show was recorded during a historically bad spell of form for Real Madrid. Ramos laments the adverse results but adopts a stoical (read: unerringly bland) outlook. “The focus is to defeat the next opponent,” his brother tells him over the phone, capturing the level of insight.

The directors cook up the usual flashy montages of goals and grimaces but we see no interactions with team-mates, nothing that would shed light on the changing squad dynamic or festering club politics.

Perhaps Ramos’ colleagues — apart from Lucas Vazquez, who appears in a couple of subsequent episodes — declined to participate. Perhaps Ramos himself was wary of including any material that might compromise his position as Real captain and living icon. That is his right. But let’s not pretend that this is telling us anything about football that we didn’t already know.

Whenever there is the remotest danger that we might be treated to some sweet dressing room tension, we’re whisked straight back into Real Househusbands Of The Bernabeu territory.

There’s Sergio attending a horse show. Sergio looking at paintings. Sergio doing the voiceover, saying things like, “All my life, since childhood, I’ve been used to dreaming big. And in that sense, winning is the prize.”

The level of banality is extraordinary.

To be clear, this is not Ramos’ fault. This is simply the point we have reached with football. The sport is now just another vehicle for content, to the extent that multinational companies can put out vacuous, shiny things like this and claim they are culture objects, fully confident they will be guzzled down by people who either won’t notice the difference or won’t care.

But this is not football and it is not a real documentary. It is a PR reel.

“This is me and how I want to be seen,” says Ramos at one stage, also nailing the recent spate of shows that purport to lift the lid on life at a club (starring Juventus, Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund) but did little of the sort.

Foul play and constant battling to be No 1 — Ramos would fit right in with the Peaky Blinders.

At the London screening of episode one, a TV reporter asked, “Is there anything you wish the cameras had not captured?”. It was either hilariously naive or willfully disingenuous, yet it did nail the level of interrogation that can probably be expected of this show’s eventual audience.

And sure, in Ramos’ position, why not agree to this kind of project?

The issue lies with the countless TV execs in nice suits who spent months convincing him that things like having a dream or loving his family make him unique. ‘Guys, Sergio enjoys spending time with his kids! Isn’t that amazing?! Guys, Sergio likes music! Keep it coming, big man! Guys, I’m smiling so hard that my jaw has locked! Guys!’.

In fairness, things do get better after that first episode.

Ramos’ parents are interesting characters. There are some nice drone shots and one sequence involving an appearance on a Spanish talk show, where he has to dance and play guitar, that actually shows Ramos’ vulnerable side. He seems genuinely nervous beforehand. It is — whisper it quietly — massively endearing.

Indeed, for all the clanking awkwardness of the set-up, Ramos generally comes across very well. He is clearly a superb professional and appears, on this limited evidence, to be an exemplary husband and father.

But herein lies the final problem with the eight-part show.

Call me a glassy-eyed idealist but I don’t want one of football’s mythical beasts to be normalised before my very eyes.

This man, on the football pitch, is one of the great dividers of public opinion — a player who allies technical brilliance with a snarling, spiky villainy that few in the modern game can match. I don’t want to know that he is a lovely family man. I want him to be a cartoon egomaniac. I want him to be a nightmare.

At the very least, I want him to be interesting — but even that lower bar proves too high for this show.

The real crime committed by El Corazón de Sergio Ramos is that it manages to make Sergio Ramos seem boring.