When "Capo" Sonja Schwarz (Chiara Schoras) finds a carefully discarded newborn on her doorstep in the morning and shortly afterwards the body of a young woman is discovered, an unusual criminal case begins. A DNA sample provides the sad certainty that the body is that of the young mother who appeared to have died falling off a mountain cliff. Sonja and her partner Jonas (Gabriel Raab) encounter shockingly little grief from the strictly religious parents of Theresa Egger (Linda Berthold).

Former Russian KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko (David Tennant) has ventured into dangerous territory after emerging as a dissident book author and Kremlin critic. In 2006, when he suddenly started coughing up blood after meeting two businessmen in his adopted country, Britain, he was certain that he had been deliberately poisoned.

The dragon Smaug sets out to destroy the lake-town of Esgaroth. The residents then seek support from the dwarf king Thorin (Richard Armitage), but he refuses to help them. He, too, has succumbed to the dragon disease - a delusional greed for power and gold. His stubbornness eventually leads to a terrible war between humans, elves and dwarves. Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) tries to mediate between the parties. But an even darker threat awaits the denizens of Middle-earth in the form of Sauron and his mighty army of orcs.

No Tanzmariechen could get past her. And Elke Schetter (Katja Heinrich) has also clashed with club president Günter Kowatsch (Herbert Knaup): Now the strict dance trainer of the carnival club "De Jecke Aape" has been murdered. And that just a few days before the start of the new carnival session. A disaster! During their investigations, inspectors Freddy Schenk (Dietmar Bär) and Max Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) quickly find out that "De Jecke Aape" has recently been anything but cheerful.

Thanks to a colleague, the Berlin journalist Paul Jensen (Moritz Bleibtreu) ends up in Moscow, where he begins to work for a tabloid newspaper with a large circulation. He helps the newspaper shine again until he publishes a politically motivated article that turns his life upside down. He is declared a terrorist following a bomb attack and has to watch as the power of the media descends on him.