Ellen Norgaard's first day back at work after maternity leave ends in disaster: her son is abducted from the care of his childminder. Inspector Witt and former public prosecutor Lossow set everything in motion to find the child.
Ulf, Eva and Renate, all in their seventies, are partying hard during a camping trip in Poland. The next day, Ulf, confused and distraught, is found by hunters at the edge of the forest. He believes he has killed someone.
The prominent TV presenter Sandra Berger is dead. Gardening entrepreneur Britta Hausmann finds the TV lady beaten to death in her Usedom vacation home. Chief Inspector Ellen Norgaard is shocked when she meets the dead woman's husband, the equally well-known TV presenter Jonas Gomez, at the crime scene. The two are connected by the well-kept secret of a passionate affair. Karin Lossow senses that Ellen is in a bad way. The detective pours her heart out to her friend. Nobody at the police station suspects that Ellen was seeing Jonas Gomez at the time of the crime. It would mean the certain end of her career in the police force and the probable end of the career of her lover, who has no alibi for the time of the crime and is also being blackmailed.
There is a fire on Usedom: Karin Lossow's thatched-roof house is on fire. She manages to escape from the house at the last moment with Ellen Norgaard's help. Karin has suffered smoke inhalation and is immediately taken to hospital.
School secretary Annett Ludwig is jogging by the sea. She discovers a dead teenager under a steep cliff: Theo Jacobsen, a pupil at her school. The 17-year-old was considered an inconspicuous outsider. Karin Lossow knew Theo from commercial school, where she led a course on legal issues as part of a project week. By chance, she had witnessed a bullying attack on Theo, who was at the top of his class, and offered to help the boy. Rainer Witt and his colleagues Holm Brendel and Dorit Martens investigate Theo's laptop. It turns out that he was engaged in a lively trade in test questions, which he sold to his classmates and made thousands of euros in profit. To do this, the alleged model pupil used access to the headmaster's surfer - only school secretary Ludwig knew the password.
Police sergeant Holm Brendel follows the trail of prominent Swedish crime writer Arvid Johansson in Ystad. Former public prosecutor Karin Lossow accompanies Holm on the private trip. On the ferry back to Usedom, she meets Dana Driest, a native of Poland. She has a conspicuous hematoma on her cheek. Was she a victim of domestic violence? The next day, Karin sees Dana's husband Jochen driving off the ferry in his SUV - without his wife.
North Friesland today: After the death of his father-in-law, Hauke Haien takes on two important roles in coastal protection - dyke count and director of coastal protection. Professionally, Hauke is the best man for the job; he is a visionary who lives and thinks in harmony with nature. Only people are not his cup of tea. As a loner, Hauke hardly knows how to inspire an audience and win over fellow campaigners. His warnings about the effects of climate change are dismissed as hysteria in the village, even though the coastal inhabitants know that a drastic change of course in climate policy is unavoidable. Fortunately for Hauke, his wife Elke supports him. She manages to make him heard. But Hauke does not enjoy his success for long, because when it becomes known that his plans are much more radical, he is met with incomprehension and anger. Resistance and pressure wear on him. Disaster can no longer be averted.
As Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels creates films and pictures used to prepare the Germans for Total War and the Holocaust. When the war is lost, he conceives his last staging, the most radical propaganda act still possible to him.
Jakob is really a woman, but the superstitious villagers are obsessed with the idea that Jakob has to be a man in order to protect the village from a great calamity. Jakob has never been in any doubt about this destiny. She lives an isolated existence on a lonely farm. One day Jakob takes on Tom at the farm. Tentatively, the two come closer...
Frida wants a baby. But although she forces her boyfriend to follow a strict fertilization regimen, she’s not getting pregnant. Just when she’s about to resort to artificial means, her boyfriend dumps her. Suddenly, she’s missing the most important pregnancy ingredient – the father. But Frida will stop at nothing to get her baby.
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere: after a wild party, seven people take part in a high-risk game. A well-known media mogul becomes their host, but then turns into a cynic. In the end, the seven people realize that the game only took part in their heads...
She has her life firmly under control - but then the unbelievable happens. For seven hours, Hanna, who works as a psychotherapist in a Bavarian high-security prison, is taken hostage in her office by one of her patients. She is at the mercy of her tormentor, whom she has recently made a positive prognosis, and is raped several times. While the SEK Hanna, who is standing in front of the door, looks to safety, a convicted rapist destroys the life of a wife, mother and self-confident, cheerful woman. After the fact, nothing is as it was.
Martin Kühn has work to do - and a lot of it. As an inspector, dealing with murders and kidnappings is his bread and butter, but when these crimes happen almost on his doorstep, even the experienced police officer is not left cold.
After her divorce from local politician Victor Braydon, Simone Eggebrecht finds stability in her work with the disabled and in her friendship with Wiebke Siehl, who is paralyzed. Simone's plan to build a hotel for the handicapped in a prime location is torpedoed by anonymous acts of sabotage. She hires Patrick Horn as a security guard. When the young man disappears, Simone blames her ex-husband and his party colleague Enno Littmann and involves Commissioner Ellen Norgaard and her colleague Rainer Witt in their War of the Roses.
In may 1940, the German troops enter France. Frightened by the progress of the enemy, the people of a small village of Pas-de-Calais decide on the recommendations of the prefecture, to give up everything to go on the road, fleeing to the coast.