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.....

Washington Times
September 4, 1994

Final Edition
SECTION: Part D; ARTS; NOTABLE AND NEW
Pg. D1

TELEVISION

Hunting for 'Fortune'

Fox-TV, looking for ways to capitalize on the testosterone created by their new NFC NFL games, premieres "Fortune Hunter" tonight following football.  Mark Frankel is Carlton Dial, who may as well introduce himself as "Dial, Carlton Dial," a la "Bond, James Bond," because that's who Fox clearly wants viewers to think of when they see the suave stud.  Each week Dial jets to another exotic locale where he cavorts with scantily clad beauties.  And to think CBS followed football with "60 Minutes" all those years!
 
 

Los Angeles Daily News
September 4, 1994

TV BOOK

OUT 'FOX'-ING THE COMPETION NEW FALL SEASON BEGINS
EARLY WITH BASEBALL, SPY, YOUNG 20'S SHOWS

Lynnette Rice Daily News Staff Writer

Cover Story

A sexy James Bond type, a Marge Schott-esque baseball team and a playful clan of 20-something adults will
join Bart Simpson and Al Bundy this fall as Fox Television attempts to boost its Sunday night lineup.

"The Simpsons" and "Married.With Children" will be sandwiched between three new shows that tout adventure
and comedy in a three-hour time span: "Fortune Hunter," a spy adventure featuring a dashing agent and his nerdy computer sidekick; "Hardball," a major league team with minor league talent; and "Wild Oats," an ensemble piece about life after college and before mortgage. The season begins Sept. 4.

In "Fortune Hunter," agent Carlton Dial (Mark Frankel) works at Intercept, a high-tech spy agency that tracks classified information, complex weaponry, endangered species-your basic, ultra-secret kind of stuff.

When Dial has difficulty with basic spy tasks-like when the combination to some vault seems a bit too complex-Dial seeks help from Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman), the technological wizard/computer nerd at the home office. Complex and adventurous cases, to be sure, take Dial all over the world.

Show executives say that comparisons between Dial and James Bond are unavoidable, but that's OK.

"I think it's just a genre which is ripe right now, with the success of True Lies and the new James Bond
picture," said Carlton Cuse, executive producer.

"We obviously cannot afford to blow up bridges like James Cameron does, so what we try to do is have a lot
more fun. There's a lot of great character humor."

Frankel, and Englishman best known for his role as Simon Bolt on "Sisters," will certainly possess some of the James Bond sexy characteristics, but he will not seem as salacious as his famous counterpart.

"Our character Carlton has a great irreverence, a real bravura quality that is kind of beyond what we see in the James Bond series," Cuse said. But some things you can never avoid, the executive producer said.

"My hope is that Carlton Dial is seen as the guy every man wishes he was and every wife wishes she had," said Cuse. "He has the money, cars, women, travel, exotic places. We'd all like to project ourselves into that world."
 
 

TV WEEK

Character a mix of Bond, Indiana Jones New series 'Fortune Hunter' will be aimed at Fox's NFL fans on Sundays.
STEVE HALL

He's a suave, British, handsome superspy, able to disarm a beautiful woman with a quip or a terrorist
with a well-placed karate chop.

James Bond? No, "Dial. Carlton Dial."

Dial (Mark Frankel) is the title character of Fortune Hunter, a tongue-in-cheek, 007-ish adventure series on
WXIN (Channel 59) this fall. It premieres at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept.4.

Fox broadcasting officials hope the show, with its scenes of Dial swapping gunfire with bad guys and
seducing sexy females, will appeal to the testosterone of the fans who just watched NFL football on Fox.

Good luck. Dial's most formidable adversary will not be some genius supervillain but a greying, wrinkled,
76-year-old newsman named Mike Wallace. CBS' top-rated 60 Minutes has owned this time slot for years and regularly rolls over any competition like a tank.

"MacGyver was very successful in tandem with Monday Night Football for ABC," said Carlton Cuse (The
Adventures of Brisco County Jr.) who co-produces the show with Frank Lupo (Walker, Texas Ranger). "I hope
Fortune Hunter can be the successor to that show."

Remember Charade

His name is inspired by a Cary Grant character-Carson Dial in 1963's comedy/mystery Charade-Dial is a former
MI6 operative rendered redundant by the collapse of the Cold War. To support his expensive lifestyle (such as collecting antique airplanes), he recovers items lost or missing in international intrigue for a high-tech company, Intercept.

How high-tech? Dial wears a contact lens with a tiny camera in them; hidden in his ear is a tiny communications system. Both allow a wise-cracking sidekick, Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman), to follow and advise Dial in action from his couch potato lair at Intercept headquarters.

In the pilot, Dial takes on a superweapon, a curvy Russian spy, and numerous bad guys-who receive more of
a pounding than radial tires. But whether he's blowing things up or bedding another swell dame, he always does it with irreverent humor.

Explaining to one cigarette-holding woman why he finds female smokers sexy, for instance, Dial says, "It's the sense of mystery. You never know when their lungs will collapse and they'll keel over dead."

Frankel, a London native best known to American audiences for playing rich industrialist Simon Bolt on NBC's Sisters, admitted the Bond films influenced his depiction of Dial.

"But I want to try for a greater level of unpredictability, so you never know what Dial might say or do next." He said during an interview. "And I want him to have a sense of humor, even in the most dangerous situations. I'd say he's more along the lines of Indiana Jones-you know, high-energy, sweaty and dangerous-than the supersmooth, cool, calm Bond."

Good at Comedy

He's obviously gifted at comedy: He stars in Leon the Pig Farmer, a Monty Python-ish big screen comedy that won the Critics Award at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Frankel plays a real estate agent from North London who discovers he was the product of artificial insemination: his real father is a Yorkshire pig farmer.

"I have a fair amount of Carlton Dial in me, but I'm probably somewhere in the middle between these two
characters." Frankel said.

Co-star Hoffman may not look familiar, but younger viewers will know his voice. He's the actor beneath the blond wig, top hat and purple suit of the Mad Hatter on Disney's acclaimed educational series Adventures in Wonderland. Showtime subscribers also saw him playing Tonya Harding's clueless husband, Jeff Giloolly, in a Julie Brown parody last week.

But Fortune Hunter's Harry Flack may be the most challenging of the three. While Flack appears to be
watching Dial's movements on a giant TV screen, Hoffman films the scenes staring at a blue screen.  All the action is added later. "It's a completely terrifying experience, because I'm reacting to nothing." Hoffman said.

Fortune Hunter's exotic locations are equally an illusion. The Tangier bazaar in the pilot, for instance, was filmed on a Disney studio back lot in Florida. The show will try to draw an international feel from Orlando locations at MGM, Universal, EPCOT and Disney World.

Perhaps Dial could apply some of those miniature explosives to the soundtrack at It's a Small World?

The Indianapolis Star
September 2, 1994

WEEKEND SUNRISE

STEVE HALL

Fortune Hunter
**

Or: James Bond meets virtual reality.

In this cartoony, sci-fi, Bondish ripoff premiering at 7 p.m. Sunday on Channel 59, suave secret agent-for-hire Carlton Dial (Mark Frankel) has help from a nerdy couch potato sidekick, Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman).

Thanks to the tiny camera in Dial's contact lenses, Flack can follow Dial in action on a giant TV screen,
whether he's busting the chops of a bad guy or seducing a mysterious Mata Hari.

Dial is a former British agent made redundant by the end of the Cold War. To support his expensive lifestyle, he recovers items lost or stolen in international skullduggery.

Alas, the show's idea of intrigue is as shallow as a petri dish. In the premiere, Dial goes after a superweapon, Frostfire, in the hands of a corrupt industrialist (Chris Sarandon).

Dial's adventures are pedestrian in their familiarity. Who hasn't seen supersmooth agents outsmart card sharks, bag beauties and save the world while making irreverent wisecracks?

Sample: A villain realizes Dial isn't the pickpocket he claims to be.

"You must think I'm a real idiot," he says.

"Oh, I don't know," replies Dial. "You could be one of those faux idiots. It's hard to tell in this light."

Groan. Say, Harry Flack, do you think you could get American Gladiators on that big screen?

Entertainment Weekly
August 26, 1994

Television
THE WEEK
A GUIDE TO NOTABLE PROGRAMS
by Bruce Fretts

Sci-Fi

Just how derivative of James Bond is Carlton Dial (Mark Frankel), a.k.a. Fortune Hunter (Fox, Sept. 4, 7-8 p.m.)? He's a wise-cracking secret agent with a British accent, an eye for the ladies, and a pocketful of high-tech gadgets. And he introduces himself ad nauseam as "Dial. Carlton Dial." Adding a '90s twist to the formula, Dial also has a computer-nerd cohort (John Robert Hoffman), who monitors his actions on a video screen (clearly, this is the character with whom the target audience for this show will identify). Hunter may aspire to 007-level adventure, but its lackluster cast and cut-rate international locales make it seem more like a remnant of CBS' Crimetime After Primetime.