Given India's and Pakistan's dangerous decision to stage nuclear tests recently, the central premise of Wim Wenders' 1991 film Until the End of the World (World, 9.30pm), feels eerily prophetic.
The time is 1999, and the world is in chaos following the news that a malfunctioning Indian nuclear satellite is plummeting towards Earth.
Improbable? Well, no one expected India and Pakistan to start up a pathetic tit-for-tat testing policy this year, so who knows what idiocies they might come up with for next year.
Apart from that, the best thing to be said about the film is that it has a U2 soundtrack, Yohji Yamamoto costumes, and appearances by Max Von Sydow and Jeanne Moreau.
Wenders had a vision of making a film set in 17 countries, but cost and practicalities forced him to cut back to nine, which still sometimes feels like eight too many. The plot seems to have been tacked onto this idea, rather than inspired by it, and hangs on the travels of a mysterious American (William Hurt) and the woman (Solveig Dommartin) who falls for him.
Apparently Hurt and Dommartin were not speaking during filming: there is certainly a remarkable lack of communication between them. This is a shame because a believable love affair would have at least made it worth watching to the end to see what happens.
British journalist Julie Burchill wrote recently that all male football fans between 20 and 50 years old, must be closet homosexuals.
