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.”