This is a very good TV series, one of the best Swedish TV series I have ever seen! The fantastic thing about it is that its setting - an nursing home for the elderly - and its characters - elderly people and their carers, children who are themselves at the brink of old age etc.- sound so boring, uninteresting and definitely not cool. But after the first episode you are hooked! You want to know if Harriet is going to accept using her walker, and if the son she is boasting so much about is ever going to visit... If Olle will be allowed into the home, if Margit will have to stay although she dislikes it so much or if her daughter will take her home... If the new, young subs are going to manage the work, and stand it... And maybe there will even be a little love and romance at the home..? This is well-written drama at its best!
I have worked at these kinds of institutions myself when I was young, and I can vouch for that the situations that happen here happen in reality, and as do the attitudes from the different groups (adult children, young academics, bosses high up in the hierarchy etc..) I have heard many of the utterances in this series myself! It is EXACTLY like this, except for one thing: in reality (and this was so already in 2003) there would not be any people as relatively sound, healthy and youngish as Tommy, Margit, George, Asta or Olle at a home of this kind (if it is not private). The municipalities cannot afford it; you have to be like Saga or Per to get a place, and this of course makes the work even harder for the staff than it seems here.
The details in the various caring procedures are correctly pictured, the dialogue is intelligent, and the actors are also very good, most of them. A must-see for all who have anything to do with a nursing home, or who possibly will have in the near future!
