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.”