Oprah's Lance Armstrong interview: no point nitpicking – this was TV history

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/18/oprah-winfrey-lance-armstrong-interview

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She was soft on him ... she didn't tell him he was a disgrace to humanity ... she didn't even make him cry. Such criticism of Oprah Winfrey's Lance Armstrong coup is churlish.

Who cares? Oprah got the TV confession of the decade – and what's more she did it on her own channel. Would any interviewer be happy with that? And some. It was brilliant journalism.

The genius is not in the form of the interview – she more or less strokes this stony-faced rottweiler into a mea culpa. Her genius is in getting the interview in the first place, to have worked her way up from nowhere over 26 years to being the world's great go-to mother confessor.

Did Oprah and Lance Armstrong: The Worldwide Exclusive Part 1 (no flipping, as Larry Sanders would say, we've got part two tonight) make for compelling telly? Not really. Certainly, not consistently.

There were basic structural problems. First, the set; the cod domesticity – brown sofa and chairs, lace curtains – stripped it of tension. Then, the cameras were too polite – we needed more unforgiving John Freeman-style close-ups. If Armstrong was ever going to writhe and wriggle, we wanted to see it up close and personal.

Perhaps the biggest problem was Armstrong himself. He repeatedly referred to himself as a "flawed character". Which is a bit of false modesty on his behalf. But he is also a flawed victim, ie wholly unconvincing as a victim. He is too chiselled, his eyes too cold and quartz-like, face too composed, legs too smugly crossed. He said that he saw the anger and disappointment and betrayal in people, but he didn't look as if he felt it. His body language was always at odds with his words.

At one point, he laughed in the camera's eye, and says he might have called Betsy Andreu (the wife of his former team mate Frank Andreu) a "crazy bitch", but he never called her "fat". He admitted he still felt wronged about the way that has been reported – a fascinating insight into his character, as Oprah pointed out.

"I will apologise to people for the rest of my life," he said, making it sound more like a threat than a promise. Last night Lance Armstrong was still burning with righteous indignation.

What made David Frost's interview with Richard Nixon the greatest TV confession ever was the two protagonists – both exhausted, desperate, playing for huge stakes. Nixon sweated with fear and shame – when he talked about his flaws you could see and smell them; they dripped down his face. Frost-Nixon was TV interviewing's Thrilla in Manila, Ali v Frazier, two giants battering each other into submission. Martin Bashir's TV interview with Princess Diana was wonderful in a different way – she was a pure victim, with great lines ("There were three of us in this marriage"), and she was part of the royal family.

Armstrong's confession had less emotional impact than either Diana's or Nixon's. Could Oprah have handled it differently? Sure. She didn't need to make excuses for him, telling us that nearly everyone was doping so what else could he do? She didn't need to suggest that he could become a role model for clean cycling (even he didn't have the chutzpah to go with that line). When Armstrong mentioned the toxic monsters in professional cycling, she could have asked him 12 times, a la Paxman, whether he was a toxic monster? There are numerous questions that would have benefited from repeated asking, or just being asked the once. How could Armstrong systematically go about suing and destroying the lives of those who told the truth about him? Should he be in jail? Will he give away all his ill-gotten gains (to be fair Oprah might still ask in part two tonight). But the bottom line is, Armstrong almost certainly wouldn't have agreed to the interview if she had done.

The greatest structural problem was that the interview started so strongly it could only go downhill from there. Whereas Frost-Nixon built up to the spine-tingling confession, Oprah began with the money shot. So, as TV drama, it was all downhill from there. But this is nitpicking.

She got Armstrong to admit he is a jerk, a bully, a cheat, and a fraud. What more could you want than that? And the actual confession, albeit in the cosy court of Oprah, is pure drama. Five questions, yes or no answers, and he pleads guilty to every one.

"Yes or no, did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performance?"

"Yes."

"Yes or no, was one of those banned substances EPO?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever blood dope or use blood transfusions to enhance your cycling performance?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever use other banned substances like testosterone or human growth hormone?"

"Yes."

"Yes or no, in all seven of your Tour de France victories did you ever take banned substances or blood dope?"

"Yes."

This exchange will rightly go down in television history – in its own way every bit as significant as the Diana and Nixon confessionals.