The magazine format series “Frontline” (9 p.m., PBS) does the best job on television of presenting journalism on the fly, of writing “the first draft of history.”
Tonight’s installment “Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover” offers a profile of the world’s richest man and his accomplishments as both a carmaker and rocketeer as well as his personal and political transformation during the COVID era, a time when he chafed at workplace regulations and medical mandates.
This would result in his decision to buy and transform the social media platform Twitter, rebrand it as X and remake it in his own image.
So far, Musk’s “move fast and break things” approach to Twitter has resulted in an exodus of talent from the company, a loss of millions of users and a public relations fiasco that distracts from his other achievements.
But many fear what effect Musk’s ethos of “bro” libertarianism may have on X and political discourse, particularly when an increasingly erratic, authoritarian, violence-prone and seditious former president seems on the verge of locking up the Republican nomination.
The two-hour profile offers firsthand accounts from Musk’s former colleagues, journalists, authors and academics who speculate about what makes Musk tick, what turned him into the world’s most powerful man and what his sole ownership of a platform like Twitter/X might bring.
While so much about Musk seems specific to our own era, American industrial, social and political history has other examples of such “titans of industry” who seemed like beneficent geniuses to some and dangerous monopolists to others — and at least two examples of men whose lonely place at the pinnacle of power seemed to play havoc with their mental well-being.
Musk can seem larger than any one government. His Starlink satellite communication system is key to Ukraine’s war efforts. It’s frightening to some that just one man has the power to pull the plug on that operation. Given his wealth and position, Musk has offered to “negotiate” between Russia and Ukraine.
At the outbreak of World War I, Henry Ford also saw himself as a peacemaker. His assembly line revolution made him the envy of the world. In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel “Brave New World,” the word “Ford” replaced the word “God.” But after decades of adulation, Ford would spend years praising Nazis and promoting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
Howard Hughes became the world richest man in the mid-20th century, amassing a fortune in the oil business, aviation and military contracts. Throughout World War II and well into the Cold War, he could seem larger than life and more important than any one government. But he would succumb to crippling paranoia and retreat from the public eye.
It remains to be seen where Musk’s penchant for megalomania will take him in the coming years. But if history is any guide, it might not be pretty.
— Viaplay, the streaming service specializing in Scandinavian programs, imports the Danish true-crime series “Deadly Women,” profiling some of the most notorious killers in Danish history. One is the nurse who inspired the Netflix series “The Nurse,” and another is a woman who got away with murdering her husband until she bumped off her son-in-law many years later.
— Hulu invites viewers to return to the 1980s, streaming all 67 episodes of the light detective comedy/romance series “Moonlighting,” starring Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis, which ran on ABC from 1985 to 1989. The series revived Shepherd’s career and plucked Willis from near-obscurity and turned him into an A-list star (“Die Hard”) virtually overnight.
— Paramount+ streams the docuseries “Painkiller: The Tylenol Murders,” recalling the 1982 murder of seven customers who bought tampered medicine.
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— Auditions continue on “The Voice” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
— The Texas Rangers host the Baltimore Orioles in Game 3 of the American League Division Series (8 p.m., Fox).
— Agents reflect on real cases on “FBI: True” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
— A suspect seems very familiar on “FBI” (10 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
— An abduction gets media attention decades after the fact on “Found” (10 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
CULT CHOICE
Kenneth Branagh and Robert De Niro star as the scientist and his creation in the 1994 shocker “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (10 p.m., Sho2).
SERIES NOTES
“Big Brother” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … “Dancing With the Stars” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-14) … “Press Your Luck” (10 p.m., ABC, TV-PG) begins its fifth season.
LATE NIGHT
Jimmy Fallon welcomes Pete Davidson, Troye Sivan and Rod Wave on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Bob Odenkirk, Aparna Nancherla and Greg Clark Jr. visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC).