Swedish TV-drama from the 1970s and (to lower extent) the 1980s have usually been identified with an overt social content. Societal institutions of the welfare state, like public schools or health care, were often in focus. When the Scandinavian crime fiction of today is said to contain social perspectives, and sometimes to depict the disruption of the welfare state, Swedish TV-fiction of the 1970s seems to have been just as critical towards the contemporary society.

The paper will discuss the aesthetic and rhetorical strategies in the narrative and visual depiction of the relation between individual characters and institutions. With vulnerability as one main concept, the era of Swedish TV-fiction of the 1970s and 1980s will be related to later periods – foremost contemporary criminal fiction of the 2010s. The interplay between vulnerability of institutions and the vulnerability of citizens will be one of several tentative thematic issues discussed.