  In this talk we present a family of Wilson loop operators which continuously
interpolates between the 1/2 BPS line and the antiparallel lines, and can be
thought of as calculating a generalization of the quark--antiquark potential
for the gauge theory on S^3 x R. We evaluate the first two orders of these
loops perturbatively both in the gauge and string theory. We obtain analytical
expressions in a systematic expansion around the 1/2 BPS configuration, and
comment on possible all-loop patterns for these Wilson loops.
