 Perhaps the most successful of these was "Mesa de noticias" ("News Desk").The primetime sitcom, which premiered in 1983, set Mesa in a struggling network news program as its hapless programming director, and ran until 1987, appealing to audiences of an unusually varied demographic.His leading co-star, Italian actor Gianni Lunadei, joined Mesa in 1991 for a less successful spin-off, "El gordo y el flaco" (akin to Laurel and Hardy).