Fox Drops the Ball on Sunday’s Post-Game Lineup

Fox stunned just about everyone by audaciously outbidding venerable CBS for telecast rights to the National Football League. An even bigger surprise would be Fox enticing a large chunk of its football and John Madden junkies to hang around on Sundays for a prime-time lineup that opens feebly with “Fortune Hunter” and closes obnoxiously with “Wild Oats.”

Both series premiere this weekend, sharing the evening with two gasping oldies, “The Simpsons” and “Married . . . With Children,” and “Hardball,” a new baseball comedy that has been undergoing so many 11th-hour revisions (not a hopeful sign) that a review tape was unavailable prior to its own Sunday debut.

“Spy adventure” is the label charitably given “Fortune Hunter,” whose hero is former Cold War agent Carlton Dial (Mark Frankel), a high-tech James Bond. His mission now is to recover the world’s most sought-after items, and his actions are visually monitored and supported back at the home office by nerdy and eccentric (is there any other kind?) computer wizard Harry Flack (John Robert Hoffman). Flack is the voice in Dial’s ear, a la Holly Hunter whispering information to anchor William Hurt from the control room in “Broadcast News.”

Fox is hoping that Dial, its “man’s man who is irresistible to women,” will also prove irresistible to the men’s men and anyone else zooming in on football. He won’t lack for exposure. When teams are not filling the air with footballs, Fox surely will be filling the airwaves with promos for “Fortune Hunter” and the rest of its Sunday night schedule.

The protagonist of “Fortune Hunter” is not just a playboy, says Fox, for “underneath his wink and smile, Dial performs his high-risk assignments with deadly seriousness.”

Too much seriousness, actually: This is minimalist Bond in every sense. As Dial searches for a sort of doomsday weapon known as Frostfire--while encountering the obligatory beautiful blonde--you’re struck by the clunky premiere’s absence of wit and style, to say nothing of a plot unworthy even of fanciful escapism. In a final act of bungled-Bond derivation, moreover, Dial and his sexy female companion end their low-budget adventure by romantically floating out to sea in a raft.

Just as lethal are the premiere’s wooden performances. A supposedly charismatic hero who is somehow devoid of charisma, Briton Frankel’s Dial is even more forgettable than George Lazenby, who had one shot as Bond in 1969’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Fittingly, it turns out that his gun shoots darts that put people to sleep.

Agent Dial. License to tranquilize.

Meanwhile, on to “Wild Oats,” another signature series for Fox, perennially last among the four major networks in households, first in raging hormones.

Playfully mocking the hand that feeds it, Sunday’s season opener for “The Simpsons” features a line that applies here. “Honey, what’s on Fox, tonight?” Homer Simpson asks his wife. “Something ribald, no doubt.”

Pointlessly ribald, in the case of the comedy “Wild Oats,” Fox’s horniest series of the evening--no small feat given that it follows “Married . . . With Children.”

The “Wild Oats” main foursome consists of photographer Jack Slayton (Tim Conlon), social worker Brian Grant (Paul Rudd), teacher Shelly Thomas (Paula Marshall) and hairdresser Liz Bradford (Jana Marie Hupp).

All somewhere in their 20s, all idiots.

When they’re not at a Chicago singles bar named the Hangar, they do their flying at Jack and Brian’s apartment. As if the dangers of impulsive sex in the ‘90s didn’t exist, the premiere revolves around sleeping around. The especially grating Jack has a fit when his former girlfriend, Shelly, begins dating his somewhat dense best friend and roommate, Brian. He and a bimbo he’s out with even eavesdrop from the bedroom on Shelly and Brian talking in the living room.

The premiere desperately needs its own condom to filter out bad jokes and raunch. Sample: “I’ve dated before,” Brian says. “I’ve felt the gentle thump of the headboard against the wall.”

Fox’s Sunday nightcap. “You’re disgusting,” Shelly tells Jack. Exactly.

*

THE STALKER. There he was on the street Monday with a KCBS-TV Channel 2 camera operator, pursuing, even badgering Mark Fuhrman, the Los Angeles police detective whose credibility has been under heavy attack by the O. J. Simpson defense team.

There he was, Channel 2’s Inquiring Mind on the run with a microphone, repeatedly imploring Fuhrman to speak, as Fuhrman firmly resisted. Even though Fuhrman, like anyone else, has a right not to speak to the media--who do these reporters think they are, God’s appointees or something?--his refusal gave the impression that he had something to hide, even if he didn’t. Maybe that was the purpose.

The whole scene was a pitiful display of TV again using the ambush interview like an assault weapon, using it to bully someone who was seeking to remain silent. Again, his right.

The Channel 2 reporter was doing plenty of talking, though. “I’m just trying to do my job,” Harvey Levin pleaded to Fuhrman.

That job is harassment.

* “Fortune Hunter” premieres at 7 pm Sunday with “Hardball” at 8:30 and “Wild Oats” at 9:30, on Fox (Channels 11 and 6).