Messina & Rusling CV
Represented by Debi Allen at RDF Management - 020
70134103 or click on the link RDF Management
Voice Overs: Earache 020 7287 2291click on
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ORIANE
· ORIANE
HAS APPEARED IN PAUL MERTON’S SILENT CLOWNS SERIES, DOC MARTIN, MY HERO,
STUPID, HELEN AND GAIL, THE BEARDED LADIES SITCOM AND GREEN WING
· FAY
HAS APPEARED IN STUPID, THE BEARDED LADIES SITCOM, HELEN AND GAIL AND GREEN
WING
· TOGETHER THEY
HAVE APPEARED ON THE COMEDIANS COMEDIAN AND COMEDIANS BEST LOVED CHARACTERS
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CREDITS
2003 - 2005 |
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WORLD ACCORDING TO ME - 2005 2 x story line – 1 x script |
Dandy Productions |
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STUPID - 2005 Commissioned writers on kids
sketch show |
CBBC |
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MY PARENTS ARE ALIENS – Series 7 - 2005 Writing an episode for series 7 |
ITV |
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28 ACTS IN 28 MINUTES - 2005 Performing act within show |
BBC 3 |
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GREEN WING SERIES TWO – 2005 Commissioned writers on second
series aired 2006 |
Talkback / C4 |
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THE BEARDED LADIES – SERIES 2 – 2005 Writer/Performers on own show |
BBC Radio 4 - 6.30 |
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SPEEDING – 2004/5 Writer /Performers in Comedy Lab |
C4 / Talkback |
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THE ELLIE KENNEDY NETWORK – 2004/5 Optioned format for sitcom |
Hat Trick |
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Development team for new comedy
series |
Channel X / C5 |
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GREEN WING SERIES 1 – 2004 Commissioned writers on 9x1hr
episodes Award Winner · BAFTA Pioneer Award 2005 Nominated
2005: · BAFTA nominated for Best sitcom · Royal Television Society - Writing Team · Royal Television Society - Best Sitcom · British Comedy Awards - People’s Choice · Broadcast Awards - Best Comedy & New Show · Southbank Awards - Best Comedy & Innovation |
Talkback & C4 |
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The Bearded Ladies Edinburgh - 2004 Episode of Radio 4 series recorded at the Pleasance during the
Festival |
BBC Radio 4 Series 2 commissioned for 2004/5 |
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Bearded Ladies Live Show – 2004 Winner of Fringe Reports Best Sketch Show of 2DTV – 2003/04 Animated sketch show |
Smirnoff Underbelly ITV |
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He Says She Say - 2004 By the makers of Grumpy of Old Men |
BBC 2 |
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The Bearded Ladies – 2003/04 Performing and writing own sketch show with McDougall & Donkin |
BBC Radio 4 6.30 Slot from Dec 2003 to Jan 2004 |
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Green Wings – 2003 Commissioned writers on 9x1hr
episodes of new comedy *
development team for pilot Transmission September 2004 |
Talkback & C4 |
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Give Me A Break – 2003 Optioned format for new
children’s series |
Initial/Nickelodeon/MTV
International |
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Diner Party Inspectors - 2003 Talkback Factual – script editing |
Talkback & C4 |
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US-5 – 2003 Development team for new teenage show |
Endemol |
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2002 TV Moments –
Feb 2003 Nominated for Most Memorable Comedy Moment of 2002 for ‘Car Parking’
sketch from Smack The Pony. CLICK ON LINK TO VIEW SKETCH |
BBC 1
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Smack The Pony Series 1,2 ,3 and Xmas Special 2003 ·
Series 1 & 2 won
International EMMY’s ·
Series 3 nominated for a BAFTA ·
Bronze at the 43rd d’Or in Montreaux |
Talkback & C4 |
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Sprite Advert for Pitch
Development Diet Coke Advert – 2002 Writers of ‘French Kiss’ advert Frisk Advert – 2002 Creative Team for European Campaign Diet Coke Campaign – 2001 Writers of ‘Call Me’ Advert |
Weiden & Kennedy Ad Agency |
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Display heaps of humanity, cleverness and an
exquisitely wicked sense of fun. Slyly
written and brilliantly structured, it’s Ladies Of
Letters with flick knives. RADIO TIMES
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Guardian Pick of the Day
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GREEN WING
SERIES ONE – relating to material by Messina & Rusling
- Green Wing feels like it’s been
made by deeply abnormal people. It
looks like a fairly safe bet for the year’s best comedy – slick, silly
with an unprecedented three strong female leads, an unprecedented hour
long running time, innovative directorial style and the best musical
breakfast sequence featuring grapefruit since Morecambe
and Wise. It’s not really recognisable as a sitcom – the first 20 minutes feel
like the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan, with characters and
jokes being flung at you in a bewildering style. THE TIMES – CAITLIN
MORAN
- Eight writers are credited and
you imagine them all squabbling round a table until you guess that they
separated and wrote segments; every scene is a sketch length, lending to a
punchline which is generally mucky or surreal or
both. A doctor comes into a room to
find a buxom colleague weighing her breasts individually on the mailing
scales. A woman wearing an eye
patch replies to the inevitable concerned request for explanations: ‘I got a sperm in the eye’. There is an appealing almost Twin
Peaks-like, feel to these scenes. THE GUARDIAN – MARK LAWSON
- From the brains behind Smack
the Pony comes Green Wing, a new medical comedy
with intelligent humour… daft visual gags and
quirkiness. Some jokes are filthy,
other stupidly slapstick. But
they’re all funny – could this be the cure for bad
- So many reasons to love this
gloriously stupid new comedy…. There’s the writing. The eight strong team
is headed by Victoria Pile the driving force behind Smack the Pony. Its an
influence that announces itself in the particularly strong female
characters… it also has a distinctive style – sped up/slowed-down
sequences, surreal visual jokes and slapstick. TELEGRAPH
- There are moments in the life
of everyone who watches TV for a living which are the equivalent of
spotting a diamond on a rubbish heap.
Green Wing is one such moment.
It’s a breathtakingly inventive, stupidly funny new comedy from C4
- you’ll be
in comedy heaven for the next nine weeks. RADIO TIMES
SPEEDING – COMEDY LAB CHANNEL 4 2005
- Today’s Must See TV – Pick of the Day – THE INDIPENDENT
- A tragicomic portrayal of speed dating, where
romance-seekers risk social carnage FINANCIAL
TIMES
- There are some good laughs to be had,
particularly involving a deluded Russian who thinks he’s a spy and a
lesbian with ‘a face like a big lump of cheese’. TIME OUT
THE
BEARDED LADIES –
- THREE WEEKS
You are sure to appreciate the
sarcastic, witty and comical genius that is the Ladies. A series of
fast-paced sketches exploiting and exaggerating female eccentricities,
this is definitely a feminine not a feminist take on love, work, sex,
friends, and sport. The best way this summer to exercise your cheek
muscles! (August 2004) - THE SCOTSMAN This is impressive stuff… This is comedy with its head on and there
are flashes of sheer genius. There is an outrageously clever sketch
performed half in Chaucerian English which the Monty Python boys would
have been proud to own, a brilliantly observed aerobics teacher, and a marvellous moment with a woman who has become French
(to explain too much would steal the Ladies’ thunder, and they deserve all
the thunder they can get). (August
2004)
- FRINGE REPORT - Verdict:
Outstanding comedy Oriane
Messina
delivers strong ensemble and solo performances, memorably as a woman who
turns French, and Welsh hairdresser - with a remarkable ability to evoke
pathos, as well as full-on comedy. Fay Rusling delights constantly,
including her glorious harassed lifeguard, mime-hair-cutting victim, and schoolgirl
longing to catch the ball.
- THE STAGE To say that Oriane Messina and
Fay Ruslings’ latest piece of scripting lives up
to its name is to credit the show with no small achievement. Despite
exploring dark issues like sexual frustration and harassment at work, the
Bearded Ladies’ collection of sketches is definitively hilarious…. Drawing
on the accomplished performances of comedians who differ wonderfully in
both appearance and delivery,
REVIEWS FOR THE BEARDED LADIES RADIO 4 SHOW – SERIES 1
- Best Of The Christmas Radio 2003 A very funny new sketch programme
from a talented team. Look forward
to the rest of what promises to be a highly entertaining series
- Radio: At Last We Are Having A Laugh Again SUNDAY EXPRESS 2004 Concrete Cow and The Bearded Ladies may have differed in style but were marked by
a similar streak of surreal nonsense and a cast of mad but endearing
characters… both shows were filled with witty and intelligent moments
- Radio Choice SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 2004 If you enjoyed C4’s ‘Smack the
Pony’, this new sketch show is for you.
The Beard’s poke fun at female foibles, especially at work: a pole
dancer who was a management consultant, a circus performer who wants to
run away to a call centre
- GIRL ABOUT TOWN 2003 Remember the radio? Excellent, because
it will come in handy over the festive period… There's some top comedy
talent on New Years Eve in the form of The
Bearded Ladies…
funnier than standing in a room singing Auld Lang Syne
any day.
SMACK THE PONY SERIES 1, 2 AND 3 - SKETCHES BY MESSINA &
RUSLING
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The Guardian Highlights
include what’s presumably meant to be an archly post-modern joke involving a
woman driver’s parking problems.
- Heat Magazine If you don’t laugh out loud at almost every sketch in
this episode then you will at least smile at
- Heat Magazine Highlights include a very silly (but in a good way)
- Heat Magazine Doon Mackichan
channels her manic energy and excels as the yoga teacher from Hades.
- Times Metro The trio seemed to have a limitless fund of quirky
characters … there was Phillips as the vet who didn’t know one end of a
hamster from the other.
- Times Metro A surreal sideways view on girlie bonding: the lipstick
competitions - sisters are at last doing it for themselves - and not a
moment to soon.
DIET COKE ADVERTS – WRITTEN BY MESSINA & RUSLING
- French Kiss 2002 A young woman is registering
evening class attendees. A young man arrives for the French class. She
asks: "French literature. . . French polishing.
. . or French?" and reaches forward to kiss him - but only in her
fantasy. She does, however, recover her composure enough to flirt with
him. "A plus tard?" she says as he
goes to the class. "Taste the
moment," says the endline, a commercialised version of "carpe diem"…….
Its starting point is the British sense of reserve, which Coke is
encouraging us to let go. Hence the endline and
the music: Lady Marmalade, the girl-power song from Moulin Rouge. Daily
Telegraph – Dominic Mills
- Call Me 2004 Man and woman are in a
restaurant. Man asks “Is it all
right if I call you?” Girl whips
out pen, writes number on paper tablecloth; adds work, mobile, fax, pager,
best friend’s, mum’s numbers. Girl
then tears tablecloth in half and presents to open-mouthed man. “So call me”, she says. Casting pace, acting, script - all spot
on. It made several Campaign staff laugh out loud. First ad v.v. good. Campaign
Magazine – Dominic Mills
CONTACT DETAILS
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Agent
Telephone Number: 020 70134103
Or click on the link below:
Last revised: April 2006