As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situation gradually grows worse as the bishop becomes more controlling, but dedicated relatives make a valiant attempt to aid Emilie, Fanny and Alexander.
Two patrolling cops stumble on to three criminals who have just stolen large amounts of explosives, and are killed in cold blood. Martin Beck and his team must now work day and night to find out who the killers are and what they are planning to do with the explosives before it's too late. Meanwhile, Gunvald Larsson who was a close friend of one of the murdered cops is ignoring all rules in his quest for revenge.
Somewhere in the archipelago outside Sandhamn lives the barber Assar Gustafsson and his 17-year old daughter Anna-Bella. Out of the blue his wife comes back after five years of absence. She starts up a brothel in their bath house with Anna-Bella as the main attraction, a brothel that attracts various men from all over. The browbeaten Assar starts to make arrangements for his wife's permanent absence.
