It is hard to ward off despair when looking at the cast of political players in this drama: the cynical, the racist, the exhausted.
You could argue, looking at the cast lists on HBO, that television is where movie stars go when their big-screen scripts start to die.
I kept looking at the cast photos on the board at the office, and I would cringe as I walked by them.
"When we come off air the previous year and start planning for the next year, we look at the changes we'd like to make, we look at the casting – he's very much involved in all of that.
The British black and Asian (BBA) Shakespeare database, researched by Jami Rogers at Warwick University, has charted more than 1,200 Shakespeare productions between 1930 and 2015 and looked at the casting of black and Asian actors in those revivals.
In the movie industry, one only has to look at the casting of recent blockbusters to see that informal gay discrimination is alive and well.
I mean, look at the cast, those fantastic actors.
"We can keep pushing for marriage without stopping our work for him," he said, "because we can just look at the cast of characters waiting in the wings".
I looked at the cast-off hangers of travelers past, the wastebasket filled with my abandoned shopping bags, then at my bulging suitcase, and I had to laugh.
When you look at the cast list for the Ladies' Day lunch, there are so many other topics that could be raised over the After Eights.
