Sweden at the turn of the previous century. Arvid, an ambitious and well-educated young man, meets Lydia, the daughter of a landscape painter, during an idyllic summer vacation and falls in love. Lydia, however, has other suitors, and Astrid is frightened of being tied down by his emotions. Trapped inside loveless marriages of convenience, they struggle in later years to rekindle the promise of their romance with bitter and tragic results.

Hjalmar Soderberg, born in Stockholm, in 1869, was one Scandinavia's leading modernist writers. "The Serious Game" is Sweden's most celebrated and enduring love story.