Magda Nilsson is a very talented young woman, but she has had a difficult upbringing and lost her self-confidence. She is also a singe-parent mother with her fragile son Arne. Magda is also difficult, antisocial and hard to get to know, but beneath the surface she seeps from suppressed love needs.

Inga starts working as a trainee at Skå Barnby at Färingsö outside Stockholm. There she gets acquainted with people living nearby. Soon disturbances and conflicts arise between them.

A young and spoiled aristocrat is guilty of a hit-and-run accident.

Orphan girl Gunilla (nick named Kulla-Gulla) gets sent from her orphanage to work as an housemaid at sharecropper Karlbergs household. Among her duties is to take care of Karlberg, his wife and their five children.

Priests who call sex education the devil's invention rage against the progressive doctor whose bigoted wife may regret when his teenage daughter comes home and wants an abortion. The subject of Mimi Pollack's only feature film was controversial. The model for Doctor Borg was the well-known Katrineholms lecturer Torsten Wickbom, who advocated modern sexual education in the school and family.

Britta is the foster daughter of Professor Rydberg. The last 13 years she has lived with him and his son Sven. She and Sven are closely not only at the siblings' way. They are engaged.

Three Scottish noblemen escape from Gripsholm Castle and breaks in to the home of Lord Arne. They kill everyone except for Lord Arne's adopted daughter Elsalill.

The young beautiful sisters Lilly and Ragni are motherless. They live with their father, a horse dealer. During a horseback ride, Lilly and Ragni come to a pond of water lilies. They undress and swim naked. A local watches them play.

Agneta Gyllencrona is in love with Henrik Lettnoff, a refugee from the Baltic. They have to leave together when her mother, the Countess, wants to tear them apart.

Professor Barring is awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. According to Barring the scientist's sole duty is to seek the truth, even if this leads to the "gates of hell".

Janne Vängman is heavy drinker who always stands up for the poor and oppressed.

Young Allan feed on petty crime and theft. He spice his life by scaring people with stolen dynamite.

Hilda Granström runs a ladies' tailoring shop. Her husband Richard is a cellist in the Opera Orchestra. Their three daughters help out in Hilda's shop. Richard's 80-year-old mother, who once was a dancer, also lives with the family.

Olga Sundbom is divorced and has custody of her spoiled son Krister. The lack of upbringing has made Krister an intolerable petty gangster. He is therefore put in a boarding school in a smaller town, and his getting in is due to a scam he himself is responsible for. Soon he turns the little idyll upside down.

Latin teacher Birger Sjögren at Ringsala boarding school threatens his possesive and chronically ill mother that he will get married. She gets a stroke and dies. Sjögren is affected by feelings of guilt, envy and hatred towards the surroundings. A series of mysterious fires have taken place around the school the last few months. One of the students has seen Sjögren setting fire to a barn. But can he convince the trusted biology teacher Nordmark, expert of the criminal mind?