Steve Krantz

The BBC's flagship cinema review TV program featuring reviews of new releases, news items and interviews. The title of the program changes each year to incorporate the year of broadcast.

The bite of a radioactive spider transforms a teen into a superhero.

This cartoon series, characterized by extremely limited animation, features five of the most popular super-powered heroes from Marvel Comics: the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, and the Sub-Mariner.

In late 1960s New York City, fed up with monotonous college life and police repression, free-spirited Fritz, an impenitent seducer and unrestrained party-animal, decides to explore the world. And just like that, as he flees NYC, heading to San Francisco, Fritz embarks on an endless adventure of illumination. Immersed in a world surrounded by drugs and sex, Fritz participates in mad orgies, brings about a revolution, incites mass urban riots, and crosses paths with drug-addled Nazi bikers.

Mistral's Daughter is a 1984 American television miniseries written by Terence Feely and Rosemary Anne Sisson, based on Judith Krantz's eponymous 1982 novel. The eight-episode serial—starring Stacy Keach, Stefanie Powers, and Lee Remick—follows the lives of women connected to tempestuous painter Julien Mistral, across several decades in France, exploring themes of art, love, and scandal.

Fritz, now married and a father, is desperate to escape the domestic hell he now finds himself in. Lighting up a joint, he begins to dream about his eight other lives, hoping to find one to provide a pleasant distraction. The drug-induced journeys he takes include spells as an astronaut, Hitler's psychiatrist, a courier travelling in hostile territory during a race war, and as a pupil of an Indian guru in the sewers of New York.

A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.

Judith Krantz's Till We Meet Again was a 1989 TV mini-series based on the Judith Krantz novel, Till We Meet Again. It starred Mia Sara, Bruce Boxleitner, Hugh Grant and Courteney Cox.

Alan Masters is a despicable businessman with his hands in organized crime. He marries Diane, a kind and gentle woman, and abuses and batters her viciously. Sergeant John Reed has had enough of his city's organized crime and, against the wishes of his dirty-cop superiors, tries to get evidence against Alan Masters. After Alan finds out that Diane has been helping Reed, he beats her to death...and its up to John Reed to put him away for it, and clean up the dirty cops that want to stop him. Part I starts with Diane's death and then, in a flashback, details her struggles against abuse and Reed's struggles as he coaches her to gather evidence against Alan. Part II deals with Reed's struggles with intimidating cops.

Jack Reed is investigating a mass murder that occurred in a cemetery in broad daylight. Most individuals at the cemetery and the victims are Russian immigrants and they either fear or don't trust the police, because they have complaining about other problems to the police but they don't care or think it warrants investigating. Reed still investigates and it leads to a devious Russian who has turned some young Russians into his private army. Reed's friend, Charles Silvera, also has a problem. The son of an old friend and mayoral candidate, Gordon Thomas, has been arrested for killing someone while driving under the influence. Some of the people on Thomas' staff are afraid that this might jeopardize Thomas' bid for mayor, so they are pressuring Silvera to make it go away but Silvera relents so they threaten him to.

When a young mother is murdered, Chicago police sergeant Jack Reed sets out to find her killer. But the secret world of undercover operations rears its ugly head.

Orange picker Leroy Jones inadvertently becomes a union leader and is forced out of town, leaving behind his sex-obsessed father, Rufus, and timid spouse, Annie Mae. He heads for Los Angeles, where he falls for union organizer Vanetta. Annie Mae seeks solace from local preacher Lenox Thomas, who eventually impregnates her. When Leroy catches wind, he heads home for a showdown with Lenox.

Jack Reed investigates a young woman whom he and his wife take into their household when she turns out to be targeted by unknown assassins.

An alcoholic movie star (Raquel Welch) who finds romance at a rehabilitation clinic encounters problems in the outside world. Roman à clef of Elizabeth Taylor's last marriage.

Marion Ravinel is trapped in an abusive spousal relationship. She forms a plan with her husband's former lover to kill him. However, the outcome turns out to be more than she planned on as she begins to believe that her husband has come back from the dead to get her.

In the mid-1960s, a group of high school friends who live on the Near North Side of Chicago enjoy life to the fullest...parties, hanging out, meeting new friends. Then life changes for two of the guys when they are falsely arrested in connection with stealing a Cadillac. We follow their lives through to the dramatic end of high school.

Strange killings occur at Ruby's drive-in theatre, sixteen years after the murder of her gangster boyfriend.

Ostracized at a snooty private school because of her rural, poor background, a scholarship student is tormented to the point where her only remaining recourse is revenge, using the only method she knows: her psychic control over snakes!

The plot: Roy is jealous of Sigi, who attracts Nancy's attention, and has two clumsy guys demolish Sigi's father's T-Burn classic. For the repair of the car, Sigi desperately needs $250 until his father returns next weekend. He and his friends try to earn it on the swap meet.

Chicago police detective Jack Reed investigates the brutal murder of a stripper while he deals with corruption and bureaucracy within his own department.