Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves

Episodes

Episode 1, "Love" (Kärleken), focuses on the 19-year-old Rasmus (Adam Pålsson), who after graduation moves from rural Värmland to Stockholm to attend university. As soon as he arrives in Stockholm he begins to seek out the gay community, where he meets and befriends Paul (Simon J. Berger). At a Christmas dinner party in Paul's apartment he eventually meets Benjamin (Adam Lundgren), a young man who is struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality and faith as a Jehovah's Witness. Interspersed with the main narrative, there are scenes of Rasmus as a child and the dying Rasmus.

An early scene in the episode shows two nurses dressed in heavy-duty bio-protective clothing in the early 1980s caring for a man suffering from AIDS. As the nurses tend the pained man, one nurse wipes a tear from his eye, which leads to the second nurse rebuking her afterwards with the sentence that is the title of the series: "Don't ever wipe tears without gloves", reflecting the fear surrounding AIDS at the time.

Episode 2, "Disease" (Sjukdomen), focuses on the relationship between Rasmus and Benjamin after they have moved in together. AIDS has started to spread among their friends, end eventually it also reaches them. When Rasmus is found to be HIV-positive, Benjamin finally decides to tell his parents and church elders that he is homosexual, in order to fully support Rasmus. This leads him to being shunned by the church, and forces his parents to stop all contact if they want to remain in the congregation.

Episode 3, "Death" (Döden), deals mainly with the deaths of Paul and Rasmus through AIDS. While Paul's funeral is made into a splendid opera, just like his life, Rasmus's parents refuse to accept Benjamin's request concerning Rasmus's funeral, although they had been deeply in love and Benjamin had remained by Rasmus's side throughout. This episode also includes some reflections by the surviving Benjamin over 20 years later.

Reception

In Sweden, the drama had a 34% audience share, and received good reviews from the Swedish media. It is credited with raising awareness of HIV and AIDS within Swedish society and has been praised by members of the LGBT community for its depiction of how the AIDS crisis affected Stockholm in the 1980s.

Following the BBC broadcast, Time Out London rated the first episode at 4 out of 5 stars, asking readers to look past the series' name. The Daily Telegraph gave the series opener 4 out of 5 stars in a review, praising the shooting and the use of symbolism. The Independent's Ellen E. Jones compared the series with the American miniseries Angels in America in regard to the spread and reaction to HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, finding the series' zeitgeist and character portraits to be strong, though the bildungsroman at the centre of the plot and generic characters were less inventive.

Awards