Sophie is admitted to hospital with a fainting spell. She has recently started feeling sick all the time and has a headache. She fears she might be pregnant again. And now she is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her husband Joachim is never around and their three sons consume all her energy. She throws herself into an affair with the doctor Paul Wolff in order to feel alive again.

Olaf Gabriel is the head of the department and at the same time the only employee of the police station in Hedly, a small northern German coastal town. He has quit his service and waits at the station for his successor. But instead of the replacement appears the young LKA official Gracia Keller, who wants to support him. Because on this day Simon Held is released from prison after six years. And he will surely come to avenge Olaf Gabriel, whom he considers to be his brother's murderer. He was killed in police custody after his joint bank robbery - and Olaf Gabriel had been on duty.

Walter is an unemployed architect, who is getting ready to go for an interview. But just as he is about to leave his flat, an eight-year-old boy, Yuri, approaches him at the door, claiming to be his son.

In order to renovate the damaged church on the border between the hostile villages of Oberriesling and Unterriesling, the residents set off together in a coach to faraway Hamburg under the leadership of the Häberles and Rossbauers. There, they want to win a brass band competition with a highly lucrative prize. Unfortunately, Pastor Schäuble has drunk away all the donations. There are already plenty of arguments on the way north and the Hamburg mentality is not compatible with the Swabian one.