Dick Cheney was often referred to as the Darth Vader of the Bush administration.

There are moments in “The World According to Dick Cheney” when this former vice president comes off more as Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper in “Rebecca.”

Both guided young, inexperienced protégés to the brink with unflappable certitude, self-assurance and an unsettling monotone. They were so persistent and persuasive that it was almost a shock when it turned out that each had an idée fixe that could burn down the house, or, in Mr. Cheney’s case, whole countries.

That’s not the overt message of this documentary, which will be broadcast Friday on Showtime and was made by R. J. Cutler, a producer of “The War Room” and director of “The September Issue.” This film, a long interview with Mr. Cheney interspersed with news clips and journalists and biographers, isn’t an exposé or an indictment, nor is it the kind of spooky character study that Errol Morris made of Robert S. McNamara in “The Fog of War.”

Mostly, it’s a self-portrait in black and white that is subsequently colored in by a Greek chorus of journalists and biographers and a narrator who sounds omniscient because it’s Dennis Haysbert, who once played the president on “24” and is the voice of Allstate Insurance.