Mark Frankel is tired.

He has just stolen into a fortress in Serbia and plucked the world’s largest uncut diamond from a high-security case.

It’s just another day in the life of the super secret agent. That’s Dial, Carlton Dial. He hangs from airplanes, defuses bombs, recovers pirated weapons systems and does battle with villains around the globe.

For his character, it’s a piece of cake. For the actor, it often seems like mission impossible. There are seven-day workweeks, and many 20-hour days.

The TV spy drama is back, adventure fans, and this time the action is in Central Florida’s backyard. Producers of Fox’s Fortune Hunter, which premieres Sunday at 7 p.m. locally on WOFL-Channel 35, are reproducing the escapades of the fictional James Bond-style secret agent in the region’s swank homes, busy streets, small towns and theme parks.

As it turns out, Hong Kong is as close as Sanford, Morocco as near as Epcot ’94.

The main reason Fortune Hunter is in Central Florida is to take advantage of locations that can double for Europe and other foreign countries. In Sunday’s episode, for example, Dial tracks down a stolen weapons system code-named “Frostfire” in Morocco. Large parts of the show were filmed in the Moroccan pavilion in the World Showcase at Epcot ’94.

The show’s producers also have been able to go to San Francisco using the backlot at Universal Studios Florida. They have turned a Sanford alley into a Hong Kong street and Church Street into a jammed Paris avenue. The exterior of the Team Disney building in Lake Buena Vista, Walt Disney World’s administrative offices, is Intercept headquarters; the Living Seas Pavilion at Epcot is an oceanographic research center; and the Turner Power Plant in DeBary is a Third World nuclear power plant.

With few exceptions, not since the spate of TV spy dramas in the 60’s – including I Spy, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible and The Avengers – has a show so ambitiously sought to capture the allure of espionage.

Dial embodies the suave spy created by novelist Ian Fleming in the 50’s and sealed in the public consciousness by the James Bond movies. An ex-British agent working for a private recovery organization called Intercept, Dial is written to be exceedingly clever, courageous, witty and sexy. Yes, he always gets the girl.

Frankel, born and raised in London, brings a very British accent and 10 years’ experience on stage and screen to the role. In the United States, he is best known for his part as a billionaire recluse on Sisters.

“It’s a great fantasy with excitement, action, humor, danger, suspense,” says Frankel, 30. “I just don’t think there is anything on TV like that. I like the idea that people will be able to come on that mission with me.

Fox is giving the series a choice spot between its Sunday NFL football games – for which it outbid CBS earlier this year – and The Simpsons. Since Fox launched its original programming lineup in 1987, Sunday night has been reserved for its best shows.

ALL EYES ON SPIES

Not coincidentally, spies have also become cool at the box office. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a spy in True Lies, Harrison Ford is drawing audiences as CIA agent Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger, and the 18th Bond movie, Goldeneye, goes into production this fall after a five-year hiatus of the 007 series.

“For whatever reasons, moviegoers and TV watchers embrace different genres at different times,” says executive producer Carlton Cuse, formerly executive producer of Fox’s Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

The producers are trying to bring the Cold War spy into the 90’s. Dial, Cuse says, will have a better sense of humor than Bond and a little more willingness to show emotion. His women will be active participants in the story, not just arm dressing. Dial also has no license to kill, which should please parents. Lawsuits from criminals have become such a nuisance, according to the story, that Dial’s orders are to use only a tranquilizer gun.

In the 60’s, Russians were the most popular enemies. The fall of communism, however, has left no vacuum of bad guys for Dial to chase.

“We may not be in the Cold War, but in many ways it’s a more complicated world,” Cuse says. “Within that world, I think there are a lot of great issues to be backdrops for great stories.”

In re-tooling the 007-inspired legend, Fortune Hunter has given its hero a 90’s kind of partner as well. Harry Flack, played by comedic actor John Robert Hoffman, sits in the home office and follows the exploits of Dial on a 90-foot video screen. Dial at all times wears an electronic ear piece and a special contact lens with a built-in camera so that Flack, in sort of a virtual reality game, can see and hear everything that Dial does. Flack also can relay helpful information to Dial.

“I am the guy at home watching the show,” says Hoffman, who played Mad Hatter on Disney Channel’s Adventures in Wonderland. “You’re not just watching, you are also part of the adventure. That is a very up-to-the-minute idea.”

Flack, a nerdy but sensitive techno-wizard, lives vicariously through Dial’s adventures. It is Hoffman’s first prime-time television role, and he has only one small problem with it.

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK

“All your life you’ve wanted to be put in a TV show,” he says of himself, “and then you get put in a TV show and the entire show, as you are watching it, is cut between you and someone who looks like he (Frankel) does!”

Each week a gorgeous female staff member at Intercept will hand off a dangerous assignment to Dial. In addition to retrieving stolen diamonds, his jobs will include recovering purloined missiles, lost satellites and missing plutonium. Not to mention kidnapped people.

“Carlton Dial really gets his hands dirty,” Frankel says. “At times there’s almost an Indiana Jones feel to it. He’s literally hanging on by his fingernails sometimes.

Of course, he has the latest high-tech gadgetry to help him out of predicaments. Rescuing the diamond in Serbia, for example, took a little ingenuity.

The jewel was submerged in water. He dumped liquid nitrogen into the bath to render the alarm system useless. Then he used a handy pocket laser to cut the ice-encased gem from its prison.

Carlton Dial will be able to do what all secret agents do. That is, provide his audience with pure escape.

“There aren’t a lot of heroes on television,” Cuse says. “There are more shows about the verisimilitudes of life and which present real-life situations and show how we can deal with them. We offer a clear alternative to that.”