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TV previews

CUT-RATE BOND FOX'S 'FORTUNE HUNTER' FAILS TO MEASURE UP TO ITS MOVIE MODEL
Ken Parish Perkins, Tribune Television Critic.

"Fortune HunterBR> 6 p.m. Sunday, Fox

As someone who has spent many hours happily vegetating in front of the tube with a James Bond film in the VCR and another on deck, I often wondered: why can't anyone come up with something like this as a weekly television series?

So you can imagine my enthusiasm as details emerged about a James Bond-type series in development. Then I learned the developer was none other than Fox Broadcasting Co., the perpetual puberty network.

"Fortune Hunter" (6 p.m. Sunday, Fox-Ch. 32) arrives as the lead blocker in a lineup shrewdly designed to twist a knife into the underbelly of football-less CBS.

The upstart network fully expects to keep football fans hooked on Sunday nights, offering along with "Fortune Hunter" two signature hit comedies, "The Simpsons" and "Married. with Children," and a pair of new sitcoms, "Hardball" and "Wild Oats," which I'll get to later.

First this. Oozing with lofty levels of testosterone, "Fortune Hunter" stars Mark Frankel as the suave, self-assured Carlton Dial, a superduper agent-for-hire. Dial free-lances for Intercept, a high-tech global recovery organization that pays him handsomely to find rare and potentially dangerous items-the same kinds of stuff Indiana Jones hunts down for museums.

Dial may not be a paragon of integrity, but he has a passion for what he does: making money and seducing women.

Dial makes it clear that he is a material boy who likes his wines fine, his clothes stylish and his collection of airplanes in a straight line.

He's also a solo performer. Upon meeting his new partner, he whines, "Why do I need some chairbound geek in a peanut gallery watching my every move and issuing bad advice?"

The geek is Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman), who hibernates inside a state-of-the-art computer studio monitoring Dial's movements on a large video screen. He alerts Dial to potential trouble and serves as the agent's piped-in information source.

If the pilot is any indication, "Fortune Hunter" is at best a weak-kneed cousin of the Bond franchise. Diehard Bond fans will find it all a joke; others won't mind that the espionage adventures are kids' stuff and the international locales cut-rate.

Frankel, a British film actor known to American audiences for his recurring character (Simon) on "Sisters," conveys his urbanity in the venerable tradition of all spy thrillers: He's a chronic flirt who meets the most gorgeous women in the most bizarre places, a breezy wisecracker who introduces himself as "Dial. Carlton Dial."

It should be noted that "Fortune Hunter" is somewhat violence-sensitive. As an Intercept employee tells Dial in an apparent inside dig on the issue of TV violence, "We've been warned to cut down on the violence." Thus, Dial's gun fires tranquilizer pellets, not bullets.

Still, the fundamental problem with "Fortune Hunter" is that once you take away the gorgeous face, the gadgets, the beautiful women and the daredevil antics, what you have is a materialistic, macho jerk.

But, boy, he certainly looks good.

NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE
September 4, 1994

TV FOCUS

CHIP IN THE OLD BLOCK
MARK LORANDO

'FORTUNE HUNTER'
Mark Frankel, John Robert Hoffman
Premieres Sunday, 6 p.m. Ch. 38

So pronounced are the similarities between this show and the James Bond movies it emulates, it may has well be called "Fortune Hunter 007." Frankel is Carlton Dial, smooth-talking spy-for-hire and star agent for Intercept, a "global recovery organization that tries to get deadly weapons out of the hands of terrorists, and so forth. The big gimmick: Dial has a computer chip in his head that lets a computer operator (Hoffman) see and hear everything Dial sees and hears-and to bark information and instructions right back at him. There's something amusing interplay between the two, but if you decide to watch this instead of "60 Minutes," it'll be for one reason: To see the dashing Frankel do his debonair thing. An entertaining diversion with sex appeal, if you can get past the Bond comparisons.

INDIANAPOLIS NEWS
September 1, 1994

EXTRA

The Fox network hopes this Dial will touch you
MARION GARMEL
 

JAMES BOND?
No. "Dial. Carlton Dial."

A working person's James Bond will invade your television set at 7 p.m. Sunday (WXIN) as Fox network premieres "Fortune Hunter."

Mark Frankel, who played Simon Bolt on "Sisters," stars as Dial, a former super spy who changed jobs at the end of the Cold War.

Now he works for Intercept, a high-tech company that retrieves sensitive missing items.

But he's not alone in this venture. Back at the home office is Harry Flack, a couch potato. Flack monitors Dial's every move on a giant Omnimax screen, seeing, hearing and reacting to the same things through tiny cameras on Dial's person.

"The perfect agent meets the monitor extraordinaire," Flack proclaims when the two are matched up. "It's a natural."

John Robert Hoffman, who can be seen as the Mad Hatter on the Disney Channel's excellent "Alice in Wonderland" series, plays Flack with a perfect combination of computer smarts and armchair traveler.

Frankel's dark good looks and panache make him a suitable Bond clone. His British accent doesn't hurt, either.

And Dial has an unexpected and quite likable, if cynical, charm.

"I could never resist a beautiful woman with a cigarette," he says to a woman who has been following him around Morocco.

"Really, why is that?" she asks.

"I think it's the sense of mystery. You never know when their lungs will collapse and they'll keel over dead."

LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
September 2, 1994

L.A. LIFE

TELEVISION FOX OPENS SEASON WITH ECLECTIC TRIO IT'S BOND, BASEBALL, AND, WELL, SEX
Ray Richmond

Ready or not, here it comes: the 1994-95 network prime-time television season. It may not be pretty, but its' nonetheless upon us. And as usual, Fox is getting out of the box earliest (if not best) with three new shows on Sunday night.

That trio would be the secret-agent drama "Fortune Hunter" (7 p.m.), the baseball comedy "Hardball" (at 8:30) and the raunchdom "Wild Oats (at 9:30), all on KTTV (Channel 11).

Taken as a group, these are not an especially impressive bunch. But it would be stretching things to say they don't live up to expectations, since there really aren't any.

Let's begin with "Fortune Hunter," just because it's undeniably the most derivative (read: rip-off) series to surface this fall season. It's already being called "Junk Bond" in many circles because it is so shamelessly modeled after the James Bond series.

In one episode, for instance, hero Carlton Dial (Mark Frankel) says three times that his name is "Dial. Carlton Dial." He's also dashing, debonair and deadpan (along with several other d-words), and he tends to take impossible international missions in calm stride while keeping one eye decidedly open for the ladies.

Yes, he's licensed and quite assuredly Bonded. And while Frankel plays Dial with a certain suave British elegance, he lacks the sheer charisma needed to be an effective 007. I know Sean Connery, Mr. Frankel, and you're not Sean Connery.

The plot line of "Fortune Hunter" finds Frankel portraying the master agent for Intercept, a high-tech global recovery organization. He's a kind of agent-for-hire who never botches an assignment, good mercenary that he is. But the only gun Dial can carry pops out tranquilizer darts. Not exactly thrilling.

The show's best gambit is the way Dial is connected to a techno-geek named Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman), who keeps track of the agent in the home office via a sophisticated video computer activated inside a watch on Dial's wrist.

It's all very silly and only marginally exciting. But "Fortune Hunter" is nothing if not, well, familiar. Deja-view television, tailor-made for the just-watched-a-football-game crowd.

Just don't tell Ian Fleming.

NEWS AND OBSERVER RALEIGH, NC
September 2, 1994

Day

Fox tries a little Bondage
BOB LANGFORD, Staff WRITER

There's no point in hiding the fact that "Fortune Hunter" is a James Bond rip-off.

It just is.

Not that that's a bad thing.

"Get Smart" was even a James Bond rip-off, too. So was "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." Even "Mission: Impossible" was, with Bond broken up into six different characters.

Let's face it, you just can't have a spy series without there being a little Bondage involved.

And "Fortune Hunter" is tied to Bond from the get-go.

First of all, it stars a dashing young Brit who spends a lot of time in a tuxedo. The guy who plays him, Mark Frankel, has dark hair and every once in a while, if the light strikes him just right, he could pass for Sean Connery's nephew.

He's always wriggling out of impossible situations. Oh, and he's always getting beautiful women to fall for him.

"There are obviously," says executive producer Carlton Cuse with a smile, "some similarities."

How'd they come up with that name?

Well "Fortune Hunter" follows football on Fox. It starts this Sunday at 7, or whenever Dallas and Pittsburgh wrap up.

And that makes it more than just another show on Fox. It makes it the show that has to keep 10 million viewers, a good percentage of them men, tuned to the network.

"There's always a little pressure," says executive producer Frank Lupo. "I think this show is a natural to follow football because it's got, you know, a lot of action and adventure and a couple of strong male stars."

And it's better to start out with a bunch of viewers who may tune you out, says Cuse, than to never get anyone to tune you in.

"Sometimes," he told TV critics this summer, "it's hard to make a lot of noise on Fox."

Plus "Hunter" isn't trying to attract the same audience as "60 Minutes." Sure some people will think about it for a minute, but not many viewers will be on the fence between Carlton Dial and Andy Rooney.

Cuse used to head up "The Adventures of Brisco County Junior," a show with a similar sensibility that never could get over the ratings hump. Later in its run, when it was trying to stay on the air, he used a huddle full of NFL stars to boost ratings.

So don't be surprised if you see Reggie White showing up as someone's bodyguard. Or Jimmy Johnson playing an evil villain with perfect hair.

But back to the show itself. While Dial, Carlton Dial, is running around the world pulling off these capers for Intercept, there's another guy watching everything he does.

See, Dial is all wired up with a camera and a mike, so a computer nerd named Harry Flack helps him out of a jam, or helps him win at cards, or just makes jokes.

It's a neat twist that helps broaden the appeal of a genre that needs a twist.

There are other differences in doing a Bond, say, 30 years ago, and in the 1990's. Besides the obvious one of the bad guys being gone.

Oh, and Dial doesn't kill. He stuns. He only carries a tranquilizer gun. Sort of the Jim Fowler of secret agents.

That also lets especially evil bad guys come back later in the season, and "Fortune Hunter" is good enough to stick around a while.