The worn-out ex-journalist Ralph has to work as a substitute teacher at an evening school and in the end learns more than his protegees.

The lawyer Dr. Wagner is a real disgust - neither for his employees nor for the residents of his apartment building does he have a friendly word. But when a violent pipe break in Wagner's penthouse flooded the apartments underneath on Christmas, the neighbors who had become "homeless" made a radical decision: Since Wagner refused to help his tenants, they settled under the leadership of the resolute Rita and her adult daughter Sophia without further ado with the stubborn loner - for a few happy, if not exactly quiet, Christmas holidays.

Together with his students, Ralph is faced with an unpleasant task: The evening school is moving to an innovative educational center. Ralph thinks this is a bad joke.

Some call it a men's holiday, the other flee from themselves: Thomas, Jens and Malte have rented a holiday home on a secluded Swedish lake - the complete contrast to life at home. They are only partially satisfied with that for different reasons. One is around 40, the first interim balance revealed weak points. But even in the Swedish forest, where there are at least one moose in addition to the free-running men, the guys catch up on the reality quickly. Because the wasteland is not as gullible as hoped ...

Shortly before her 40th birthday, the successful surgeon Anne May is plagued by self-doubt: Actually, she would have to be satisfied, since she has long been married to her childhood sweetheart Peter and has built up a working family life with him. Nevertheless, Anne is deeply unhappy. When her husband is on a business trip, she meets Carolin Winter, the mother of a school friend of her son. Quickly, the two women make friends, Anne gets carried away by the joie de vivre of the native Chilean.

At the centre of the comedy ‘Halbe Hundert’ (‘half of hundred’) stand three strong women at fifty. As with so many women of their generation, the number on their birth certificate seemingly doesn’t fit to their sense of life at all. But all three of them stand before decisive changes. Anne is successful in her professional life as a hand surgeon who is acclaimed all across Germany. The victim of her flawless career is her marriage to Klaus, who had her back with regards to children and household for years and now has left her unexpectedly. Anne reacts with wounded vanity and books a young, attractive male escort for a congress. But the relationship, considered to be professional, throws Anne out of the loop emotionally. Charlotte has worn down herself for the family for years as she is diagnosed with breast cancer. With the illness in front of her eyes, Charlotte finds the courage to break out of old confinements…

Heddi is a self-confident and battle-hardened coastal fisherwoman. She only has one weak point: her daughter Eva. Eva is an environmental activist and just as militant as her mother. But despite their resemblance, Eva doesn't want to know anything more about Heddi; there has been radio silence between the two for years. But now Eva and her ten-year-old son Jannis turn up unexpectedly in the small Baltic Sea village, ostensibly for a birthday visit to Grandma Lore, where Eva spent most of her childhood. In reality, however, Eva is in big trouble: She has to serve a prison sentence for resisting law enforcement - and a repeat offender at that! - she has to serve a prison sentence. But who will look after her little Jannis while she is away?

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.

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.