Channel hop on any given evening and the chances are you will see the same faces, but in different roles. Do you have a favourite overworked star?
With so many long-running drama series criss-crossing our TV screens, the modern malaise of the same actors cropping up in multiple fictions is becoming ever more noticeable.
The problem was pinpointed a couple of weeks back when the actor Michael McElhatton appeared in two shows that went out concurrently on two different channels and had an enormous impact on both storylines. Anyone watching one after the other had every right to be confused.
If you don't recognise the name, you would recognise the noble forehead and striking features if you followed ace BBC2 serial-killer drama The Fall, in which he played Belfast's corrupt chief of police, Rob Breedlove, and season three of HBO's Game Of Thrones on Sky Atlantic, in which he is Roose Bolton, venal Bannerman of the North and Lord of the Dreadfort.
Thanks to the lottery of scheduling, it turned out to be a memorable night for McElhatton, an actor who's been on our screens since the early 90s and also writes (notably, RTÉ comedy Paths To Freedom). However, his duality was problematic for those of us in the business of suspending our disbelief.
McElhatton, Dublin born and based, is one of a number of Irish and Northern Irish actors in the American-made Game Of Thrones, large chunks of which are filmed in Northern Ireland. The Fall, too, was shot in the Northern Irish capital. This is great news for local talent. But GoT's vast cast means incidental appearances from countless recognisable faces, statistically bound to be in something else at the same time.
Further down The Fall's cast was Belfast's Ian McElhinney, as gangster Morgan Monroe. He, too, is in Game Of Thrones, as knight Ser Barriston Selmy, also seen in last Monday night's episode. Viewers who watch too much telly, as I do, were also forced to toggle between Archie Panjabi as a pathologist in The Fall and as a private investigator in long-running US legal drama The Good Wife, on More4.
It's more noticeable when lead actors take on too much TV work (and if the actors of my acquaintance are anything to go by, fear of "resting" is enough to convince them to take any job that's offered). Thus, within a week of ITV whodunnit Broadchurch ending, both its detectives, the in-demand Olivia Colman and David Tennant, appeared in different roles - respectively, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and The Politician's Husband. Tennant barely had time to highlight his hair. The redoubtable Rebecca Front fronted two consecutive new comedies two Thursdays ago: Up The Women on BBC3 and Psychobitches on Sky Arts. And anyone playing catch-up with Friday Night Lights on Sky Atlantic and Nashville on More4 has to constantly refocus between Connie Britton as a Texas high school guidance counsellor and a Tennessee country star.
But it's usually the supporting players ("guest" and "recurring" cast, to use the US caste system) who create unwitting daisy chains. Eric Close is mayor Teddy Conrad in Nashville, but also lawyer Travis Tanner in legal dramedy Suits (shown here on Dave). We had the measure of Gina Torres as law partner Jessica Pearson in Suits but have recently had to adjust to her as FBI wife Bella Crawford in Hannibal on Sky Living. Jessica's partner on Suits – played by another Northern Irishman, Conleth Hill – is simultaneously baldy eunuch Varys in Game Of Thrones. Long-form US shows = huge casts = inevitable crossover.
I could go on. Dallas Roberts was a conflicted scientist in AMC's The Walking Dead and Julianna Margulies' gay brother in The Good Wife; Michael Huisman an itinerant musician in HBO's Treme but a successful producer in Nashville, while Kim Dickens, a bolshy chef in Treme, is Shelby, a repentant mum in Friday Night Lights ...
Anyone else have a pet dual-action actor on TV currently?
I enjoy pretending they're playing the same character, but in a different setting. For example, David Bradley, star of Broadchurch and Game Of Thrones: he left his newsagent's shop in Dorset after being wrongly accused of being a paedophile and relocated to Westeros to start a new life as a polygamist lord with a nasty grudge … Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.
With so many long-running drama series criss-crossing our TV screens, the modern malaise of the same actors cropping up in multiple fictions is becoming ever more noticeable.
The problem was pinpointed a couple of weeks back when the actor Michael McElhatton appeared in two shows that went out concurrently on two different channels and had an enormous impact on both storylines. Anyone watching one after the other had every right to be confused.
If you don't recognise the name, you would recognise the noble forehead and striking features if you followed ace BBC2 serial-killer drama The Fall, in which he played Belfast's corrupt chief of police, Rob Breedlove, and season three of HBO's Game Of Thrones on Sky Atlantic, in which he is Roose Bolton, venal Bannerman of the North and Lord of the Dreadfort.
Thanks to the lottery of scheduling, it turned out to be a memorable night for McElhatton, an actor who's been on our screens since the early 90s and also writes (notably, RTÉ comedy Paths To Freedom). However, his duality was problematic for those of us in the business of suspending our disbelief.
McElhatton, Dublin born and based, is one of a number of Irish and Northern Irish actors in the American-made Game Of Thrones, large chunks of which are filmed in Northern Ireland. The Fall, too, was shot in the Northern Irish capital. This is great news for local talent. But GoT's vast cast means incidental appearances from countless recognisable faces, statistically bound to be in something else at the same time.
Further down The Fall's cast was Belfast's Ian McElhinney, as gangster Morgan Monroe. He, too, is in Game Of Thrones, as knight Ser Barriston Selmy, also seen in last Monday night's episode. Viewers who watch too much telly, as I do, were also forced to toggle between Archie Panjabi as a pathologist in The Fall and as a private investigator in long-running US legal drama The Good Wife, on More4.
It's more noticeable when lead actors take on too much TV work (and if the actors of my acquaintance are anything to go by, fear of "resting" is enough to convince them to take any job that's offered). Thus, within a week of ITV whodunnit Broadchurch ending, both its detectives, the in-demand Olivia Colman and David Tennant, appeared in different roles - respectively, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and The Politician's Husband. Tennant barely had time to highlight his hair. The redoubtable Rebecca Front fronted two consecutive new comedies two Thursdays ago: Up The Women on BBC3 and Psychobitches on Sky Arts. And anyone playing catch-up with Friday Night Lights on Sky Atlantic and Nashville on More4 has to constantly refocus between Connie Britton as a Texas high school guidance counsellor and a Tennessee country star.
But it's usually the supporting players ("guest" and "recurring" cast, to use the US caste system) who create unwitting daisy chains. Eric Close is mayor Teddy Conrad in Nashville, but also lawyer Travis Tanner in legal dramedy Suits (shown here on Dave). We had the measure of Gina Torres as law partner Jessica Pearson in Suits but have recently had to adjust to her as FBI wife Bella Crawford in Hannibal on Sky Living. Jessica's partner on Suits – played by another Northern Irishman, Conleth Hill – is simultaneously baldy eunuch Varys in Game Of Thrones. Long-form US shows = huge casts = inevitable crossover.
I could go on. Dallas Roberts was a conflicted scientist in AMC's The Walking Dead and Julianna Margulies' gay brother in The Good Wife; Michael Huisman an itinerant musician in HBO's Treme but a successful producer in Nashville, while Kim Dickens, a bolshy chef in Treme, is Shelby, a repentant mum in Friday Night Lights ...
Anyone else have a pet dual-action actor on TV currently?
I enjoy pretending they're playing the same character, but in a different setting. For example, David Bradley, star of Broadchurch and Game Of Thrones: he left his newsagent's shop in Dorset after being wrongly accused of being a paedophile and relocated to Westeros to start a new life as a polygamist lord with a nasty grudge … Reported by guardian.co.uk 5 days ago.