During the Gorbachev years, Platon Makovski and his four buddies are university students who jump on the private capitalism movement. Fast-forward 20 years, Platon finds himself the richest man in Russia, having sacrificed his friends to get to the top. But with this cynical rise, comes a brutal fall.
Howard Spence has seen better days. Once a big Western movie star, he now drowns his disgust for his selfish and failed life with alcohol, drugs and young women. If he were to die now, nobody would shed a tear over him, that's the sad truth. Until one day Howard learns that he might have a child somewhere out there...
Will is looking for an escape from his family when he encounters Lee, the school bully. Armed with a video camera and a copy of Rambo, Lee plans to make his own action-packed video epic.
Ida, a Danish hairdresser who has lost her hair to cancer, returns home from the hospital one day to find her husband is cheating on her. She decides to travel to Italy on her own for her daughter's wedding, but discovers on arriving that the wedding gathering will present its own challenges.
Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.
JW is serving hard time in prison and struggling to get back on an honest path. There are glimmers of hope in his life – some venture capitalists are interested in a new piece of trading software he's developed, and while behind bars he's made peace with an old enemy. This all proves to be an illusion. On leave from prison, and back in contact with his former gang, JW learns that once you've walked in the shoes of a criminal there just may be no going back.
When JW becomes a drug runner in order to maintain his double life, his fate becomes tied to two other men: Jorge, a fugitive on the run from both the Serbian mafia and the police, and mafia enforcer Mrado, who is on the hunt for Jorge.
In a small North German village a drama played out during and shortly after the Second World War about duty versus individual conscience and morality.
After his wife Anara's serious car accident, Max searches for answers behind the glossy facades of Frankfurt and gets caught up in a downward spiral of intrigue. Anara is comatose but alive. The police suspect that her car has been tampered with. Max suspects his colleague and rival Patrick of being involved. Together with him and his colleague Saskia, he is pitching software successfully to a powerful sheikh. Max is cornered from all sides - even the sheikh could be part of the conspiracy. Saskia is his last ally, but she has to limit the damage to prevent the deal from falling apart. All the threads seem to converge in a mysterious club, and Max has to take drastic measures to regain his perfect life.
Jewish aesthete Cioma, 21, does not let anyone take away his joy of life, especially not the Nazis. In 1942, he has to find new ways to make his living in Berlin and escape deportation. In the process he discovers his talent for forgery: not only with passports, but also his own identity.
Armin Rohde experienced as a "good cop" Fredo Schulz a controversial Special Investigation operation in the drug depot Berlin-Neukölln. A covert investigator was shot and Schulz, the widowed police officer, widower and ex-alcoholic at the end of his career, is charged with the resolution of the tricky case. Together with his partner, Chief Inspector Milan Filipovic, he manages to win the young dealer Dakota as an informant. But soon the two investigators will not let go of the feeling that they have a leak in their own ranks.
The ambitious scientist Franz Walter doesn't hesitate when he is promised a professorship at the university. He immediately accepts, pledges absolute loyalty to the system and agrees to work for the GDR's foreign intelligence service until he can take up his new position. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent on foreign assignments to West Germany. Franz soon has to use blackmail to get innocent people to talk. But his superiors go even further: GDR refugees and their relatives are targeted to be psychologically destroyed, forged letters, medical diagnoses, surveillance and wiretapping are on the agenda. However, this is more than Franz can bear: he feels powerless and increasingly isolates himself. When he then decides to steal secret documents for a later defection to the West, this results in an unfortunate chain reaction leading to his arrest and ultimately to his execution...
Old farmer Pettson gets a kitten from his neighbour Mrs Kosonen and calls the cat Viiru. When Viiru starts to talk, the two become inseparable friends.
At the beginning, everything looks like a normal job. But in the apartment of a cruelly murdered woman, Judith Kepler, a crime scene cleaner by trade, encounters her own past. The dead woman had done research and wanted to contact Judith. And she knew her closely guarded secret: Judith had been brought as a child under mysterious circumstances in a DDR children's home. Origin: unknown. Now, 25 years later, Judith has the evidence in her hands that she was swapped as a child. A stranger lived her life. Did this stranger also die of her - Judith's - death?
Ivo works as a palliative home-care nurse. Every day, she visits families, couples and single people. They live in small flats and large houses. They all have different lives and deaths. They all have different ways of dealing with the time that remains. At home, Ivo’s teenage daughter has long since become independent. From morning to night, Ivo drives around in her old Skoda which she has made into her personal living space. Here, she eats her meals, works, sings, swears and dreams. One of her patients, Solveigh, has become a close friend. Ivo has also formed a relationship with Solveigh’s husband, Franz. Day after day, the two work together to care for Solveigh. And they sleep with each other. Solveigh’s strength is diminishing and she soon has to rely on support for the simplest tasks. She wants the final decision to be her own: she wants Ivo to help her die.
At the airport, customs provide a so-called mule with over a kilo of cocaine in her body. When the chief inspectors Fredo and Milan want to bring the Colombian to the police station, Milan is shot at a rest stop ... - The leading role of the chief inspector Fredo Schulz in the crime series is played by the multi-award-winning actor Armin Rohde.
Freddy Kowalski and Emile Ramzy are paramedics in Hamburg and race night after night through the city, regardless of congested intersections, red lights and oncoming traffic. They are real life savers. One day they witness a murder and decide to go to the bottom of the thing itself. They come across an explosive corruption scandal that brings them in danger. Without knowing it, they hold the most important keys to investigate the crime itself in their hands.
Maravan, aged 24, is a Tamil asylum seeker in Switzerland, working as casual help in a highly rated, gourmet restaurant in Zurich. It is also well below his own standards, because he is a gifted and highly passionate cook. In Sri Lanka his grandmother initiated him in the culinary arts, not least in the secrets of aphrodisiacal cuisine. When Maravan loses his job his colleague Andrea persuades him into a deal of the special kind: a joint catering venture for love menus.
One house, three apartments and three friendly couples, who have to put their relationships and life concepts to the test. After 20 years of marriage, Anne and Martin are close to separation. Eva and Thomas are freshly in love and want to do everything right. The relationship between Saskia and Kai gets into a crisis when she returns to work and takes care of the daughter.
Cologne/Bonn Airport: Detective Inspector Mark Kleinert transfers the young Turkish man Baran Sahin, who has been arrested for illegal possession of weapons, to Istanbul. Seemingly a routine operation - until Kleinert receives a call from his lover Carla Paditz, urging him to meet her in Istanbul. When Kleinert arrives at the hotel, Carla is already dead. Mark Kleinert does not realize that Jo Weiß, an undercover BKA officer, is also at the hotel at the same time and is watching him. The fact that there is an even bigger crime behind the murder of the woman on the Bosporus becomes clear after the murder of the imprisoned Baran Sahin. And when Mark Kleinert wants to know why he of all people was responsible for his transfer, his life is already in danger - and not only his.
