Sure, we’re biased about home products, Smuggling Hendrix was great, and everyone I’ve asked said Stelana Kliris’ Find Me Falling was captivating. Some foreign critics deemed it simple or corny. Personally, after the gratuitous sex and savagery of the Vikings, that crafted simplicity left a feel-good afterglow. Subtitles help with foreign language movies but full screen attention is forfeited.

Part of the pleasure for me was understanding everyday ‘Kypriaka’. It was heartening to see an international release depicting bustling social life, a calm island shoreline and familiar, caught-in-time Nicosia streets where people live ordinary lives regardless of our unmentioned ‘Problem’.

FMF has probably activated more positive PR for Cyprus than any political speech ever could. Common consensus was that Tony Demetriou easily held his own in scenes with Harry Connick Jnr: good, on-set chemistry. Local actors made the love story feel, for those I spoke to, as though they were absorbed into the action, not mere viewers. It’s our island!

I’m also biased where Vikings is concerned, their raids on Ireland’s east coast included invasion of my hometown (AD 821) from which they enslaved a large number of women to Iceland. Today, Irish DNA can be traced in Iceland. My paternal grandmother’s maiden name is one of several that reach back to Viking settlement of Dublin areas.

Ragnar Lodbrok/Lothbrok is in the Scandinavian Viking tales, his wife Aslaug is written, as are the warrior sons he sired. Michael Hirst’s masterfully created series uses licence as often happens with historical fact in screen adaptations either for convenience of plot shifts or dramatic effect. Hirst’s obvious passion for his subject matter is woven into the threads of a saga that covers one of the most fascinating enmities of that time.

Vikings narrates the hatred that burgeoned into respect and brotherly love between members of the Lothbrok clan and the Kings of Wessex. Old Norse and Saxon language is used in small segments, some origin words still recognisable.

One interesting aspect of the series is the way in which religious beliefs played a major role, either as sincerely held or used as a ploy towards power or manipulation of the common folk. Belief in the afterlife stokes courage for both Christians and Vikings as warriors face hideous injury, mutilation or death in battle.

The civilizing effect of a gentler Christianity is shown in the ‘sacrifice’ of Christ’s body as bread and wine posed against the human and animal sacrifices to the Vikings perceived bloodthirsty deities. Blood, according to Vikings, was sprinkled as profusely on Odin’s folk as Holy Water was on Christ’s.

Christian kings and bishops, hypocritically deploring the crimes of heathen savages, were not beyond ignoring the Ten Commandments when it suited their aims. Hirst allows belief in the supernatural in both races, and the ghost of a monk beloved by Ragnar and King Ecbert appears to them.

Land grabs and invasions continue today as they did then in spite of international laws in our ‘civilized’ world where violence impatiently simmers. Some corrupt leaders still use religion to further ambitions. The stabbing of children in Southport gave a manufactured excuse to anti-immigration thugs who don’t represent decent Brits to vent personal fury yelling ‘We want our country back!’ Ironic from law breakers whose armies of old stole other people’s lands and whose leaders called insurgents, rebels or terrorists those who fought to regain them.

Were it legal, I’d spray the rioters with ink for rapid detection, and platform heads who don’t swiftly remove incitement content should be given more than fines.

Action against injustice is as measured now as it was in Vikings depending on who is doing the invading and killing. In an unjust, unequal world, small wonder Find Me Falling gives such pleasure. In Cyprus, we talk about our Sword of Damocles ‘Problem’, but we can’t escape the real pain of lands in turmoil near us. We can, however, escape into a gentle love story framed in the soft warm colours of Aphrodite’s birthplace and hope the peaceful stability it exudes can evolve into reality for the whole island.