This page contains various reviews of the TV series "Fortune Hunter", in which Mark Frankel played the role of Carlton Dial. Below you will find the reviews as they were written... (hopefully) ..... as with any review, some are positive and some are negative.... Either way, we hope that in providing this information, you might find that your interest is peaked and you will seek it and decide for yourself. If you have already seen it, perhaps you'll be interested to see which reviewers, if any, agree with your assessment.....

ENTERTAINMENT

TELEVISION

Here's a new secret agent with a twist

Bob Blakey

Herald television columnist Bob Blakey is in Los Angeles for two weeks for the U.S, TV networks' fall press previews. His reports on what's new for fall in TV programming appear daily in the Herald.

A Jewish James Bond and a black superhero are part of Fox's arsenal in this fall's ratings battle.

But race and culture are being played up only in one instance, so we're not likely to hear the spy discussing which wine goes with blintzes.

Fortune Hunter is one of the two weekly dramas new to Fox's schedule, starring Mark Frankel as Carlton Dial, "master agent" with a global organization that recovers weapons systems, classified information and other high-stakes commodities.

Frankel most recently starred in the movie Leon the Pig Farmer, in which he's a young jew who discovers he's not really the son of a London salesman but in fact the offspring, through artificial insemination, of a Yorkshire farmer. A pig farmer, no less.

In his new role, British-born Frankel sees much more action. His first assignment in the pilot finds him inbound for Morocco to thwart a villain's evil intentions. He's assisted by high technology and a computer dweeb back at headquarters.

Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman, best known as the Mad Hatter on Family Channel's Adventure of Alice in Wonderland) follows Dial's every move on a giant screen. Dial wears special contact lenses containing miniature TV cameras, and an audio hookup allows two-way communication so that Flack can, for example, help him cheat at cards during the inevitable casino scene.

The suave agent looks good in a tux, is handy with his fists and guns, and charms women straight to bed. This isn't new turf for anybody, including longtime movie fan Frankel.

"Young Americans are brought up on Superman and Batman," Frankel says

"I was brought up on Bond movies. So I guess that was part of my childhood and definitely had an influence on me."

Despite 007 ripoffs, right down to a final love scene in a rubber dinghy adrift at sea, Fortune Hunter is good fun, tailored to a TV audience with limits on violence and brought up-to-date with computer gadgetry and special effects.

The tough challenge for producers Frank Lupo (Wiseguy, The A-Team) and Carlton Cuse (The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.) will be to produce episodes every week that match the quality of the pilot, which they had months to create.

Diane Werts

THE NEW SEASON
Openers From Fox

FORTUNE HUNTER
The time slot: Sundays at 7, after football.

The premise: Debonair spy-for-hire Carlton Dial (Mark Frankel) travels the globe getting into exotic adventures. He's aided by a sort of virtual-reality electronic link to his young hacker aide (John Robert Hoffman of "Adventures in Wonderland"), parked back at headquarters surrounded by video screens and databases.

The promise: "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." enters cyberspace, with tongue even more firmly in cheek. British bon vivant Frankel is equally adept at romantic interludes, chases and fistfights, and the requisite dry remark. Those "foreign" locations are mostly at EPCOT; the show shoots in Florida. The producers are coming off "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." and "Walker, Texas Ranger."

PICKS & PANS

David Hiltbrand

FORTUNE HUNTER
Fox (Sundays, 7 p.m. ET)

Mark Frankel plays Carlton Dial, the ace operative for Intercept, a high-tech international retrieval organization. He's dashing, unflappable, quippy and absolutely irresistible to the ladies. In his tony British accent he introduces himself as ''Dial. Carlton Dial.'" Remind you of anyone?

No, not Floyd the Barber. I was thinking of James Bond. So, obviously, was Fox. But this 007 knockoff is so callow and cartoonish, it won't make anyone forget Roger Moore -- or even George Lazenby for that matter. Because our hero is a mercenary, not a government agent, you can forget the license to kill. In fact, with several lawsuits pending against Intercept, the only gun Dial can legally carry shoots tranquilizer darts. Dial's annoying refrain when leaping into action (whether antagonistic or romantic) is, ''You just said the magic words.''

Sure it's weak and witless entertainment, but it's harmless enough. And that may be all you can handle after your brain has been pounded into tapioca by six hours of football. The show's only real asset is Frankel, who could give Lucky Vanous a run for his torso. Uh-oh! I believe I just said the magic words. Grade: C

SUNDAY- FORTUNE HUNTER
7 - 8 FOX

Stars: Mark Frankel (pictured)

Premise: Spy adventure a la James Bond. The hero, Carlton Dial (Frankel), is a former British agent who works for a private American outfit specializing in "recovery" - of whatever needs to be recovered or intercepted, whether it's a rare gecko or a devastating new weapon. He makes big bucks and leads the good life.

Strong Point: Good fun with a dash of adventure. It captures the arch James Bond spirit quite well, with a suave hero, dispicable villains, bodacious babes, exotic locales, plenty of action, and outlandish-but-amusing high-tech effects.
Weak Point: It's going to be very expensive to maintain the lush, costly look achieved in the pilot.
Bottom Line: If future episodes are as well produced as the pilot, Fortune Hunter could join the ranks of such crowd pleasering spy-tinglers as The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

August 29 - September 4, 1994

TV Reviews

FORTUNE HUNTER
Fox,Sun.SEPT.4, 7p.m.

Tony Scott

New spy series involving an agent out in the thaw on the heels of the Cold war depends on old-hat material from countless films and TV shows and not-so-dzzling gadgetry. If you can't lick 'em with ingenuity, hit 'em over the head with a cliche - pilot's delighted viewers will be young and guileless enough to think it's all brand new. Bound to be around for awhile.

Mark Frankel plays slick, Bondish Carlton Dial, now working for a spy bunch called Intercept on assignments handed to him by Mrs. Brady (played with a wry touch by guest starring Anne Francis). She tells him he'll be working with tech whiz Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman), who's armed with an all -seeing, all-hearing device attached to Dial. Gadget magically displays all Dial's activities on a widescreen in watchful Flack's aerie and allows Flack and Dial to communicate instantly with one another.

Dial chases after a fiendish device called Frostfire that dissolves folks. Opportunistic trillionaire Jackson Roddam (Chris Sarandon) is carrying this ultimate weapon around on his oil tanker off Tangiers. Dial's competition for the terrible weapon is Danielle Fabian (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson), patriotic Russian spy who's trying to protect her country.

Drugged drinks, an evil villain, poker in evening clothes, dinner-jacketed fights, explosions, electronic machinery and familiar plotting add up to a spyorama lampoon. But young minds who must be the target audience are being exposed to second-bill action, off-the-rack dialogue (including one crude intrusion), unimaginative direction and casual acting.

Frankel plays his superspy with studied nonchalance, and Hoffman suggests ever-vigilant, gleeful Flack is nothing more than a voyeur. Francis of course, is all pro. Wheeler-Nicholson plays her Russian straight, and sarandon limns the villain with traditional cool.

If it's supposed to be satire, the writer better look the word up. Meanwhile, pass the bubblegum.

Robert P. Laurence

Fortune Hunter
For this, Rupert Murdoch expects America to desert "60 Minutes"?

Sorry, Rupe. "Fortune Hunter" is not the after-football hit you're looking for. But it is, in your own unmistakable style, a fairly sleazy program to be on so early in the evening.

Murdoch's Fox network rang up some major headlines a few months ago when it outbid CBS for NFL games, leading some critics to speculate that having football on Sunday afternoons, with games running until 7 p.m. or so on the East Coast, would help Fox build Sunday prime-time ratings.

That conclusion was based on the notion that viewers drifting semiconscious in a post-pigskin afterglow would be too stupefied to hit their remote-control buttons and find another channel, but it ignored a couple of basic facts.

First, NBC has been broadcasting Sunday-afternoon football for 30 or 35 years and still is looking for a Sunday-night winner. So much for the theory that viewer inertia automatically produces hit shows after football
games.

Second, Fox will need something other than drivel to keep the football fans watching once the games are over. The reason Sunday-afternoon football led to Sunday night ratings for CBS can be easily explained: "60 Minutes" is a great show.

"Fortune Hunter" is drivel.

Already dubbed "Junk Bond" by critics who watched a short clip tape in July, "Fortune Hunter" is a shameless James Bond wannabe, complete with a lead actor (Mark Frankel) who speaks in a clipped British accent, not far from Sean Connery's Scottish brogue.

In the role of international adventurer Carlton Dial, Frankel even identifies himself in the classic Bond manner: "Dial. Carlton Dial." He struts around in a tuxedo and seduces sexy female spies.

He's armed with an array of high-tech secret weapons, including magic contact lenses that transmit everything he sees back to a TV screen at headquarters. He even looks a little like the young Connery. Or like his
not-quite-as-handsome kid brother.

But the James Bond craze goes back 30 years or so, back through several changes in social and political fashions, particularly in relations between men and women, with the result that the brand-new pilot episode of "Fortune Hunter" already plays like a scratchy, ill-informed rerun.

Here's the gimmick. Dial works for Intercept, a private, high-tech organization whose business it is to find stuff. This week, he's finding a new secret weapon, Frostfire, which turns its targets into something resembling freeze-dried  Folger's crystals.

It's the sort of thing Alfred Hitchcock called the "McGuffin." Made no difference what it was called; it was simply the device on which the plot was hinged. The Frostfire, therefore, is important only because it gives Dial an excuse to travel to exotic locations where he will meet suave, vicious archvillains and bed bodacious blond babes.

Chris Sarandon plays the unscrupulous arms trader whom Dial encounters at a casino in Tangier, and Dana Wheeler-Nicholson is the blonde of the week, possibly a Russian spy (can they still afford spies?), possibly the
daughter of the inventor of the gadget.

She's waiting for Dial with a bottle of champagne when he enters his hotel room.

"The bellboy let me in," she says.

"Hooray for the bellboy," grins the agent.

After a few minutes of conversation, she asks, "Can I trust you to be on my side?"

"On your side, back or front, however you're most comfortable," he says with a leer.

Later, when the villain ridicules Dial's apparently puny weapon, he responds: "It's not the size of a man's gun that matters, but how he uses it."

Let's face it -- we should not be surprised that Rupert Murdoch, the publisher of the New York Post and several other tacky tabloids in England and Australia, puts this sort of smarmy stuff on the air at an hour when children are sure to be watching.

That doesn't mean we have to leave the set tuned to the Fox channel.

"Fortune Hunter"

A new spy adventure series starring Mark Frankel. 7 p.m. Sunday, XETV,
Channel 6.

* * two stars