The HBO Recycling Program Infosheet

Here's a very fun interesting graphic put together by one obsessed and detail oriented fan of HBO. I can respect that!!

On one side is a list of HBO series (past and present) and on the other side is a list of actors that were on them. It's amazing to see the visual representation and spider-web of actors used over and over.

From the moment Aidan Gillen made his debut on Game of Thrones as kingdom treasurer Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, viewers had reasons to be suspicious. Sure, he swore fealty to our man Ned Stark and spoke modestly ("We are the lords of the small matters here") of his own role in the Grand Guignol political drama that is Westeros, a cesspool of backstabbing — and front-stabbing — that would make Lyndon Johnson weep like John Boehner. Baelish's mouth promised loyal assistance, but there was a glint in his eye, a weaselly vibe about him we just couldn't shake. Was it the flowing robes (call it Obi-Wan chic)? The disturbing tendency to deliver soliloquies while stage-managing live sex shows? Or the fact that Littlefinger — Littlefinger! — harbored a lifelong crush on Ned's wife? No, it was something else that left us unsurprised when Baelish's deception was revealed with a dagger held to Ned's throat: recognition. The last time we saw Aiden Gillen had also been on a Sunday night on HBO, when he was also playing a morally slippery politico who had trouble keeping his littlefinger in his pants and the truth in his words: Tommy Carcetti, the ambitious, duplicitous would-be Mayor of Baltimore from The Wire.


This is anything but coincidental. Carcetti to Littlefinger is just one of the many winking, cross-show transitions HBO has pulled off in recent years, as it uses and reuses its substantial repertory company of memorable — but not too memorable — character actors. This recycling has created a golden bronze age for underrecognized performers, but it's also affected the way we watch their shows. Before The Wire, Michael K. Williams was an underemployed dancer with a dramatic facial scar and a comatose career. Now, he's Omar. Scratch that: Forever, he's Omar. Even when he's Chalky White on Boardwalk Empire, he's Omar. And that's the point. It's an easy shorthand, not only for the audience — hey, we know this guy! — but also for the producers: Aspirational casting helps indicate, and potentially establish, just what a new show would like to become. Even though viewers were given only the briefest of glimpses of Chalky in Boardwalk's series premiere, we felt comfortable assuming a number of details about the character, in particular that he was likely to be a charming, menacing badass. When Chalky impressively chalked choked the life out of a tiny man a few weeks later, those suspicions were confirmed. (What remains unknown as we head into Season 2 is if Chalky has a taste for Honey Nut Weetabix, or whatever cereal well-dressed people ate in the 1920s). What all this means for the actor, though, isn't so clear: Thanks to the suits at Home Box Office, Williams is enjoying a nice run, but his chances at expanding his range or disappearing into a role are pretty much nil. In other words, it's not TV stardom; it's HBO.

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