All the Sins is a Finnish crime drama television series created and written by film director Mika Ronkainen and journalist Merja Aakko. The series, in Finnish Kaikki synnit, is set in a deeply religious Laestadian Lutheran community in northern Finland.

The first season starts when detective Lauri Räihä is sent to investigate the murders of two men in the small northern Finnish town he grew up. The investigation offers a way to escape couples’ therapy and his failing relationship. But going home forces him to face his family and the deeply religious Laestadian community that rejected him previously. Lauri seeks answers to the case only to discover other truths about himself, his hometown, and whether one has the power to forgive all sins.

The name of the religious movement comes from the founder Lars Levi Laestadius back in 1800s. One of their main purposes was to prevent men from drinking. Laestadius was a Swedish Sami pastor and administrator of the Swedish state Lutheran church in Lapland who founded the Laestadian pietist revival movement to help his largely Sami congregations, who were being ravaged by alcoholism. Today, there are about 200,000 Conservative Laestadians, most of them in Finland, United States and Sweden. Most (80,000-150,000) are in Finland.

Mika Ronkainen explained in Variety how this series is one way for him to describe his region. “The initial idea that I suggested Merja back in 2014 was: Let’s do a high concept crime drama with a strong local story about something that is very special for our region, but can be universally understood nevertheless. As we both come from the Bible Belt of Finland, and we both have a background in real stories, it was very natural for us to write a story that takes place in a small conservative town with a strong religious sect. We both come from a town like that.”

The second season continues balancing family drama and murder mystery. The story is set fifteen years earlier than the events of the first season, two months before the dawn of the millennium, in 1999.

Prolific producer Ilkka Matila (she has made 44 features in the past 30 years), is wrapping the third season of the hit crime series due to premiere on the leading Finnish streamer Elisa Viihde. Next one is about the former Finnish president Urho Kekkonen. Matila recalls in a yahoo!movies article: “Our president at that time was known as the Soviet Whisperer, for his policy of conciliation with Soviets; he was able to maintain peace and stability, and acted to protect our fragile democracy, always threatened by the anti-democratic giant.”

In January 2019, All the Sins was awarded with Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize at Gothenburg Film Festival in Sweden “for outstanding writing of a Nordic drama series.” It has been sold worldwide to more than thirty countries.