As a forestry student doing an internship, Anja Grimm ends up in that remote area in the Upper Palatinate Forest, where she went on vacation with her parents as an eight-year-old girl and her father disappeared without a trace. Her job is to take soil samples to create a soil map. At one point in the forest floor she comes across abnormal irregularities. Not long after their arrival, a brutal murder occurs. Anja soon arouses suspicion and hostility not only among the villagers with her suspicion that the perpetrator knows something about her father's fate and with her questions about the atypical soil composition in the forest clearing. Even the police react extremely reservedly to their investigations. And when it turns out that the young woman can read the signs of the forest like an open book, forces mobilize in the village who are apparently ready for anything because there is a dark secret that needs to be kept.

The godless, rough-necked Ludwig Bruckmeier has repeatedly maneuvered himself into prison. Thanks to a generous donation, he is now being accommodated by his energetic probation officer Christine Wurzelbacher in Pastor Gabriel Gottwald's rectory, of all places. The man of God wants to bring the reluctant Ludwig onto the right path with the help of his kind pastoral advisor Elisabeth. But Ludwig turns the church, including the rectory and retirement home, upside down. He doesn't stop at the confessional either. There he has a lucrative encounter with Josef Wurzelbacher, the troubled husband of his probation officer.

A policeman suspects that several bizarre deaths in the same family were murders and that the killer is a mysterious woman who just moved to the village.

After the forcible transfer to his Bavarian home village, an ex-criminal cop investigates the death of a school principal who he thinks had lots to hide.

While dealing with a burnt-down house, smelly diapers and brutal lack of sleep, a Lower Bavarian police officer faces his worst adversary: cholesterol.

A communist kangaroo moves in with an artist in Berlin.

Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.

August 13, 1961: The passengers on the interzonal train from Munich to East Berlin learn 3½ hours before crossing the border that the Wall is being built in Berlin. They have 3½ hours to make a life-changing decision: to get off the train or keep going.