Lucien de Rubempré, a young, lower-class poet, leaves his family's printing house for Paris. Soon, he learns the dark side of the arts business as he tries to stay true to his dreams.

Daniel and Stéphane, two salesmen working in the same store but who cannot stand each other, decide despite everything to team up to participate in television games so they can pay their debts.

The Arbac de Neuvilles are one of the oldest families in France. They have inhabited their ancient château for fifty-two generations and are proud of their noble ancestry. But today they are stone broke. When a bailiff turns up notifying them that they owe two million euros in back taxes, these proud aristocrats are understandably shaken to the core of their ancestral seat. Just how are they to find this amount of money when none of them has any capacity for work?

One winter morning, Patrice realizes that it's time to put an end to a miserable existence. He goes to the ice-covered river and steps on thin ice. But the first step into the icy expanse cools his intention — he wants to live! A woman appears on the shore who can be his salvation and his one and only. Love has a powerful power, but will it be able to strengthen the ice?

Antoine, a bachelor party-goer, gets new roommates: Jeanne and her two children.

France, 1640. Lawyer Maitre Pompignac has never won a case: all his clients are dead, either drawn and quartered, impaled or scalded... One day, a young woman comes to him and asks him to defend an inno- cent girl: 11-year-old Roxane, wrongly accused of killing a Marshal of France. Pompignac accepts, with- out realising that Roxane is in fact not an 11-year-old child, but a goat...