The Elon Musk Show asks: is the world’s richest man happy?

Try not to miss Gussy Sakula Barry’s documentary The Elon Musk Show: The Next Chapter on BBC Two. It’s the essential follow-up to Marian Mohamed’s 2022 docuseries, which was released when the South African-born co-founder of PayPal and creator of Tesla was primarily seen to be bouncing around like a hyperactive tech bro toddler, trying to blast SpaceX rockets into space and colonise Mars. 

This was back when Musk was only trying to buy Twitter – now X – instead of actually doing it, and turning it into an alt-right bin fire. This is all covered here, along with his fixation with political power (pumping nearly $300m into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign) and far-right affiliations (he celebrated Trump’s 2024 election win with apparent onstage “Nazi salutes”, which he denies). 

Elsewhere, there’s the entrepreneur being fired from his stint at Doge, the “department of government efficiency”; his flagrant data-harvesting (“You could say data is probably more valuable than gold”); his cyber-dominance (his Starlink company controls two-thirds of the Earth’s active communications satellites); and his incomprehensible wealth (SpaceX is close to a stock market listing that could make Musk the first trillionaire).

A key difference between the first docuseries (which unforgettably featured Musk’s mother avowing his genius while garbed in imperial purple) and this update is the ominous tone of most interviewees. Ross Gerber, an early Tesla investor who made millions from his stake, says that “to be a billionaire you have to be a little bit crazy”. Rumman Chowdhury, former head of ethics at Twitter, relates how she and others were instantly sacked. One of Musk’s schoolfriends recalls how, playing video games, Musk named his characters after himself (Elon the Strongest, Elon the Most Intelligent) and had a “compulsive need to be seen as magnificent”.

Musk, who has a “thing” about under-population (he appears to think billionaires have superior DNA to gift to the grateful masses), acknowledges fathering 14 children, but estimates are higher. He’s shown here being criticised by exes; there’s footage of the singer Grimes objecting to him parading with their son: “Fame is something you should consent to.” We also see Musk lamenting to the psychologist Jordan Peterson that, in his view, his estranged transgender child – model Vivian Jenna Wilson – “died” (metaphorically) from the “woke virus”.

It’s a brave documentarian who tries to keep up with Musk. Last week, he had his high-profile lawsuit against ChatGPT maker OpenAI tossed out of court. He also recently accompanied Trump on a state visit to Beijing to meet business leaders at an official dinner, where he made headlines for pulling faces and posing for selfies.

Is any of this making the world’s probable first trillionaire happy? In February, Musk tweeted: “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about.” One interviewee notes his tragic “divorced dad energy”. Maybe this is what’s so compelling about this documentary: the air of uber-moneyed fragility and melancholy. If you want to see Musk lumbering around like an AI-savvy Jay Gatsby, here’s your chance.

With Adolescence still picking up awards, the latest Jack Thorne drama to land is Falling, a six-part Channel 4 romance (Thorne’s first) between Paapa Essiedu’s worldly Catholic priest David and Keeley Hawes’s sheltered nun Anna. She burns herself making his scrambled eggs at her convent, their hands touch under the cold water tap – and she falls for him. Though initially rebuffed, Anna throws off her habit for the real world. Falling evolves into an unhurried rumination on temptation, forbidden fruit (for both), courage and tests of faith. It also provides an opportunity for a Thorn Birds/Fleabag-style “hot priest” scenario – what is it about cassocks that gets viewers going?

But sexiness is missing: even when David returns Anna’s feelings, the pair exude the molten passion of two teddy bears left out in the rain. That said, they do forge an intriguing emotional connection. Essiedu deftly builds David’s complex backstory and I like how middle-aged Anna artlessly blurts out her feelings like a young girl (“I’m a tempter and you’re a priest”); her unworldliness and disorientation is surely the point.

There are too many soapy subplots (domestic violence, church finances, vegetable allotments) but the strong cast, including Niamh Cusack as a thoughtful abbess and Jason Watkins as a spiteful bishop, stop it tipping into Father Ted territory. Falling will be too earnest and slow-moving for some, but it feels almost bold for a religion-based love story to be drawn out so respectfully. The sensitivity and ambition is there; what’s missing is the fire.

The new Netflix docuseries Kylie, directed by Michael Harte (editor of the streamer’s Beckham), is tender and surprising. The diminutive Australian is by now an honorary adoptive Briton. We think we know every spangled inch of her story, from the highs (Neighbours, chart hits, comebacks performed in Spinning Around’s gold hot pants and Padam Padam’s red bodysuit) to the lows (the nadir being her 2005 breast cancer diagnosis, made horribly public by having to cancel tour dates and a Glastonbury headline slot).

The third and final episode reveals, for the first time, that the singer received another cancer diagnosis in 2021 but managed to keep it quiet. It’s a late jolt in a docuseries that, until that moment, was a heartwarming tour of a gilded life built on hard work, reinvention and a good attitude. Interviewees include her sister, Dannii, and fellow Australian, friend and collaborator Nick Cave (the dark rock ying to Minogue’s shimmering pop yang). 

Until the cancer revelation, the most striking detail concerns her romance with the late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, which derailed her relationship with Neighbours co-star Jason Donovan (interviewed here with teeth stoically gritted). Kylie says candidly of Hutchence: “I have probably been looking for something like that ever since and I never got it.” The impression you get is that not only was she madly in love with him then, she still is today. Emotion pulses from the screen.

Photograph by BBC