More recently, he has flicked between off-beat comedies (like I Heart Huckabees and Barney's Version) to more mainstream affairs (Meet The Fockers, Kung Fu Panda).
Last year, broadcaster Selina Scott, 59, sent a dossier to the BBC Trust, apparently containing an "exhaustive account of blatant and sometimes malign sexism and ageism against women"; this came after she had publicly asked "how many women are there on mainstream current-affairs programmes who are over 50?
Madagascar has historically been perceived as being on the margin of mainstream African affairs despite being a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, which was established in 1963 and dissolved in 2002 to be replaced by the African Union.
At that point, he would never have been allowed anywhere near a mainstream Spanish current affairs programme; supporters say he was routinely portrayed as something between an anarchist and a Venezuelan terrorist-sympathiser.
This view has it that Iran, in cutting itself off from the mainstream of world affairs, has squandered its God-given wealth and condemned itself to insignificance or ridicule.
But there was a time when electronic music was a marginal affair to mainstream music fans, an impenetrable world with no charismatic front men nor any nuance beyond exhortations to let yourself go and feel the music.
Success for the overworked, mostly dedicated characters is not guaranteed, and at times it's close to illusory, an unusual state of affairs among mainstream crime dramas.
"Indigenous affairs is mainstream". said Alison Anderson who held the portfolio, "It's everybody's business to look after Aboriginal people.
Tyler, isolated and outside the two-party mainstream, turned to foreign affairs to salvage his presidency, aligning himself with a southern states' rights faction that shared his fervent slavery expansionist views.
