Season 55

A stranger asks Thorsten Falke to meet him. He hopes, he says, that the commissioner will keep a promise that is more than 20 years old and help him out of an emergency. Since the stranger demands a commitment without revealing the further circumstances, Falke refuses. Shortly afterwards the man is pulled dead from the Elbe. It turns out he had been living under a false identity. In order to find out who the man really was, Falke and his colleague Julia Grosz have to delve deep into their own past. And with the man the two ultimately suspect, nothing seems to be as initially assumed.

An unknown man is found dead on the banks of the Rhine. He suffered a heart attack. However, he was not alone at the time of his death; someone previously sprayed pepper spray into his face. The investigators Odenthal and Stern notice a mysterious witness: Julia, in her mid-40s. Everything indicates that she saw the man or even specifically met him.

The opportunity of a lifetime comes to André Stamm out of nowhere. A comrade from his army days offers him a promising job at the investment company “Concreta”. Rocko Andersen made a lot of money from the company. A fancy car and an apartment above the rooftops of the city: André will soon be able to afford all of this. All he has to do is do what company founder Christopher Komann demands of his team: sell, sell, sell! Andre is ready for this. His wife Anja is currently expecting their first child. He wants to offer his family a prosperous life. And in fact: he wins new customers straight away on the job and earns big commissions. But a short time later, things at “Concreta” get completely out of control...

Shortly before closing time, a jeweler in Stuttgart is robbed. He himself is injured and his customer dies while trying to escape. The robbers' actions are similar to an attack from the previous year and so the Maslov and Ellinger families, who are related by marriage, become the focus of Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz's investigation. The adult members of the family have a lot of experience in deflecting police inquiries and providing alibis. That leaves 13-year-old David, who is housed in a youth home. The detectives suspect that the teenager, who is underage, was employed as a guard during the attack. The social worker Annarosa, who looks after him, defends the boy with complete conviction and in principle doesn't make any effort to support the police; she doesn't think much of state rules.

“The Curse of Money” begins where “The Cold of the Earth” ended. The chief inspectors argue because Leo Hölzer had to discover that his partner Adam Schürk was in possession of the loot from his late father's bank robbery. But there is no time to resolve the conflict, because shortly afterwards Leo, all alone on the country road, is almost run over by a car in which two women and two men, completely overconfident, are apparently playing a dangerous game in which they take turns covering the driver's eyes . A short time later, a woman dies on the same street, and Leo suspects there is a connection. But because there is a lack of evidence, there are no official investigations. So Leo investigates on his own. The first clue leads him to the casino...

After the murder of an inmate in the prison, Inspectors Leitmayr and Batic have to move their office to the prison with the help of Kalli Hammermann, who was recently promoted to senior inspector, in order to investigate between the fronts of two rival prison groups with the support of correctional officer Claussen. Their leaders are driven by power games, vigilantism and corrupt dealings, making it extremely difficult for the police to solve the murder. When the model prisoner Scholz, who was released at the same time and who finally wants to live with his musically gifted son Ferdinand again, comes into the sights of the investigators, events come to a head for Leitmayr and Batic. Is the boy in danger?

Detective Director Liebig was celebrating his 60th birthday at Göttingen police headquarters when the party was suddenly disrupted: there was a serious accident in the neighboring old town. A van crashed into a crowd. Charlotte Lindholm and Liebig's wife Tereza, a doctor at the local hospital, are the first to arrive at the scene of the accident. Ilie, the driver of the car, is taken to the hospital's intensive care unit. The investigation begins at the same time: What if it was a shooting spree? But what was Ilie's motive for committing this terrible act? To clarify this, Charlotte Lindholm and Anaïs Schmitz delve into the world of low-wage workers. When Charlotte Lindholm doesn't feel sufficiently supported by the Liebig Criminal Directorate in her investigation, she asks her colleague's husband, forensic pathologist Nick Schmitz, for help.

Chief Inspector Faber is back on duty, but his job as head of the homicide squad is gone for now. And prosecutor Matuschek wouldn't mind if nothing changed. Faber's colleague Rosa Herzog is now taking over the management on an acting basis. Chief Inspector Jan Pawlak, on the other hand, apparently has little interest in his job. Instead, he prefers to have fun in Alkim Celik's betting shop "Mutluluk" (Turkish for "luck"). When Celik's brother-in-law Lukas Becker is found dead, the "Mutluluk" suddenly becomes the focus of the investigation. An old acquaintance of Faber's is now back on the scene: Tarim Abakay . This time Faber doesn't want to let him get away with it. But his sleuthing doesn't remain without consequences for long: Faber is intercepted by Ira Klasnic and her two armed companions in the parking lot in front of his father's nursing home. Did Abakay send them?

The notoriously unfaithful Tobias Exner has been cheating on his wife Greta, from whose money he lives, for a long time. With his anonymous acquaintance “Kitty13”, whom he met on a dating portal, Tobias plans to murder his wife in order to be rich and free. He already has a plan to make her disappear. But before Tobias Exner can implement his plan, he himself disappears without a trace. All lines of investigation lead Klaus Borowski and Mila Sahin to the mysterious dating contact...

When the club owner Otto Hübner is found shot, Inspector Bibi Fellner has to drive to the crime scene without her partner. Moritz Eisner, who celebrated his 60th birthday the evening before, is sleeping off his intoxication. As soon as he gets back to work, Hübner's business partner shoots the inspector. The bullet only grazes Eisner, but he soon faces serious problems. Traces of the crime scene and other evidence make him a suspect! Although Eisner remembers little after his film tear, Bibi believes his protestations of innocence. At a manufacturer of lifelike 3D masks, the two come across social media photos of Eisner that Claudia's new friend Lukas posted. Although police chief “Ernstl” Rauter believes in Eisner’s innocence, “the internal affairs department” does not hesitate to arrest his colleague. In order to find out who wants to frame the inspector for murder, Bibi not only has to find a killer, but also has to turn to previous cases.

Chief Inspector Thiel and Professor Boerne seem overqualified: the dead Sabine Schmidt is completely intact on the outside, she was popular with everyone, and the facility exudes a harmless cosiness. But how did the two dead squirrels come about right next to her, who apparently died at the same time? Not only does Thiel find that strange, the other tenants of the facility also seem to be hiding something. And so, together with his assistant Mirko Schrader, he takes on, among other things, Sabine's brittle neighbor Klaus Karger, who has a very special relationship with his plot. The historian Ulrich Winer shows a noticeable interest in Thiel's investigations, while his wife Vera thinks it's all a waste of time. While the professor in forensic medicine was still puzzling over the exact cause of death, his plant-savvy assistant Silke Haller noticed another irregularity in Sabine's plot, which led the team to investigate of international significance...

A micro-adventure turns into horror: The friends Ayla Ömer, Viola Klemm and Marlene Seifert try to find their way back home from the deep forest without any technical aids. They want to test whether this "dropping" in unfamiliar terrain is safe for their sheltered teenage children. But when night falls, the three neighbors from middle-class Bremen-Schwachhausen are lost in the forest - and the next morning one of them is dead. The Bremen investigators Liv Moormann and Linda Selb encounter many inconsistencies and numerous suspects. On the one hand, there is the “cell phone man”, who years ago secretly photographed campers while they were sleeping and is suspected of murdering a woman. On the other hand, the seemingly intact facade of the well-off neighborhood with the husbands Klaus Seifert, Emre Ömer and Mirko Klemm gradually begins to crack. There are also arguments among the teenage children. Selb's aunt, Johanna Selb, has a lot of insider information about the suspects.

Workers find a female torso in a sewer beneath Munich Central Station. During their investigation, Batic, Leitmayr and Hammermann come across disturbing violent videos on the Internet. The cases seem to be connected and it quickly becomes clear that there could be another murder soon. In their desperate search for the perpetrator, the detectives encounter a frightening world of crimes displayed online - and end up in danger themselves.

At a crime scene in the zoo, detectives Tessa Ott and Isabelle Grandjean experience a surprise: the victim is a chimpanzee. Although public prosecutor Anita Wegenast classifies the terrible act as damage to property in a formally legally correct but morally questionable way, Tessa, indignant, continues to investigate on her own. But little by little, more and more bodies appear in Zurich, which at first glance have little in common. There could also be a crime behind the disappearance of a suspect. The investigator Ott and Grandjean are forced to act. Only when they recognize a pattern in the actions can they solve the murder mystery. However, the fact that her careerist superior Wegenast, who is well connected and working on her promotion, wants to take advantage of the results of the investigation turns out to be a risky move in a political game...

A man was killed in a secret location under a bridge. The chief inspectors Ballauf and Schenk find out that the victim, the unemployed Peer Schwarz, was deliberately run over by a car. In his apartment they find large amounts of cash and documents that point to the systematic blackmail of well-known personalities. Did Peer Schwarz have to die at the hands of one of his own blackmail victims? A trail also leads Ballauf and Schenk to the popular former pop singer Mariella Rosanelli, who now runs a youth center. During the investigation, an argument breaks out between Ballauf and Schenk. Freddy accuses Max of not really paying attention. He isn't either, because Nicola Koch has recently won Max Ballauf's heart. Just another short affair, as Schenk suspects, or will Max Ballauf finally settle down? When Ballauf realizes that there could be a possible connection between his private happiness and the current case, his newfound work-love balance becomes a tightrope walk for him...

A dead man died in his house from multiple stab wounds, but there are no signs of break-in or evidence of robbery. Initial investigations also lead nowhere until Karow comes across a hidden door in the house. What the two inspectors find there takes their breath away. Bonard and Karow immerse themselves in the Vietnamese world of Berlin. You meet the veterinarian Dr. Lê Müller from Charlottenburg. Müller knows the dead man from before and knows more than she lets on, but she doesn't trust the police. The LKA officer Pham Thi Mai puts Bonard and Karow on the trail of a young Vietnamese woman - is she the woman they are looking for? The investigation leads Karow to a pagoda in Lichtenberg, where the souls of the ancestors have their place. However, the community's cultural center is under acute threat of demolition. This hits a sore spot for Karow. In order to solve the challenging case, Bonard and Karow also have to grow together emotionally as a team.

Hansi Pagel has been in prison for several years, convicted of violence against his wife Andrea and their children. He comes into the focus of inspectors Franziska Tobler and Friedemann Berg when the psychologist and psychiatric expert Lisa Schieblon is found strangled in the trunk of her car.

The Viennese rapper "Ted Candy" is on the way up: good-looking, talented - and business-minded! In order to switch to a bigger label, the newcomer breaks away from his mentor Akman Onur. When Ted dies after a concert - high on coke and full of adrenaline - Moritz Eisner and Bibi Fellner don't have to look long for a suspect.

Tobias Benzinger is shot dead, a young lawyer in a law firm with a considerable number of rather shady clients and a high success rate in criminal cases. Franziska Tobler and Friedemann Berg suspect that his death could have something to do with the law firm's cases. The head of the law firm, Rainer Benzinger, is extremely negative towards this theory. He retreats entirely into attorney-client confidentiality, refuses to allow any insight into his clients' affairs, and is not swayed by the fact that Tobias was his stepson. Friedemann Berg is outraged by this behavior, especially since he has learned that the two Benzingers had different opinions about the direction of the law firm.

Tristan Grünfels, a psychologist and victim counselor for the Frankfurt police, has problems. He keeps losing his temper, talking to himself and then losing touch with his already dysfunctional family. When he leaves the chaos of his home one morning to head to his practice, one thing leads to another and he kills a police officer. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding leads him to become the victim counselor for the relatives and thus unintentionally accompanies Janneke and Brix in the investigation into the murder case. While his inner voice keeps telling him to turn himself in to the police, everything only gets worse: his wife is having an affair, his teenage daughter is pregnant and his son prefers smoking weed to going to school. The situation escalates and the entanglements between Grünfels, Brix and Janneke culminate in a major showdown.

Everyone in prison liked Lenni. And everyone believed in the 25-year-old's innocence. When Lenni takes his own life, his sisters are plunged into deep despair. Shortly afterwards, another death occurs: this time Karl Dellmann and his wife Katja and their family are directly affected. Like a devilish game of dominoes, events in Nuremberg unfold one after the other - at the end of which two families, united in grief and loss, face each other, separated by anger and guilt. Paula Ringelhahn, Felix Voss and Wanda Goldwasser must try to stop a series that leaves a trail of destruction and death behind.

Hagen von Strelow is on a flight from South America to Frankfurt am Main. He is a wanted war criminal who is to be put on trial (belatedly) in Germany. Inspector Murot and his assistant Wächter are waiting for him there. Murot had been on his trail 30 years ago, but Hagen von Strelow managed to escape at the last moment. In 1944, von Strelow and Inspector Rother took part in a murder investigation in a small village. A British pilot who was in possession of explosive documents that were crucial to the war was murdered. During the course of the investigation, it turns out that the war-weary investigator Rother is doing everything he can to ensure that the documents do not fall into the hands of the Nazis, and is also protecting the Jew Else Weiß, who is in hiding in the village. With fatal consequences?

In the law firm of lawyer Patricia Prinz, her husband is shot dead. Jasper Ünel was also a lawyer, but during the investigations by Lena Odenthal and Johanna Stern, his ambitious wife turns out to be the one who has attracted aggression. Currently, it is Marie Polat, recently dismissed without notice as an employee of a call center, who is no match for Prinz's skill and unscrupulousness in court. For the young woman, not only her job but also custody of her son depends on her winning the case against the call center. Lena Odenthal and Johanna Stern experience how massively Polat's credibility is undermined in Patricia Prinz's trial. But Marie Polat is not the only one suspected of having taken the law into her own hands; Lena Odenthal is also accused of not having followed the legally prescribed procedure. In an internal procedure, she is suddenly accused of unjustified use of firearms, with Johanna Stern as the main witness.

During a traffic check on a country road, shots are fired in broad daylight - one police officer dies, a second is critically injured. Instead of helping their colleagues, two policewomen flee from the exchange of fire. Dresden police officers Winkler, Gorniak and their boss Schnabel take over the investigation. Under pressure, they coordinate a large-scale search for the perpetrator, who is able to go into hiding.

Hanna Riedle has only just moved away from her village and started a new life in the city when she becomes the victim of a violent crime. During their investigation, detectives Lannert and Bootz discover that she has left in a dispute.

When the janitor of one of Cologne's largest brothels falls to his death from the seventh floor, detectives Ballauf and Schenk are called to the scene. Evidence quickly mounts that the victim was pushed and other people's lives might be in danger.

After the death of his colleague Grosz, Thorsten Falke is taking a break in the remote St. Joseph monastery when the parish pastor dies in a fire. Child pornography material is found in his estate, which confirms Falke and his colleague Eve Pötter's suspicion that the fire may have been set intentionally.

Captain Hendrik Wilkens lies shot dead in his room on Christmas Day. He and his husband had taken in a Filipino sailor for the holidays. Together with Hendrik's children and grandchildren, it was supposed to be a peaceful Christmas. For Liv Moormann and Linda Selb, it looks like a robbery and murder. But was life really as harmonious in the Wilkens family as it seems?

The body of the lawyer Oskar Weintraub lies - completely pierced by the spear of an exotic warrior sculpture - in the middle of Doreen Prätorius' house. This house resembles a museum of exotic art, and the circumstances of the death raise just as many questions as the condition of the house owner, who cannot remember anything - not even the cause of her own serious injuries. Now Doreen Prätorius is at the center of the murder investigation: How did this fragile-looking woman end up in this situation? Is she the victim of a tragic accident or perhaps a manipulative personality herself who crosses every line for her definition of freedom?

Advent in Zurich. Who wants to be alone now? Detective Isabelle Grandjean meets the handsome Marek from Warsaw at the Christmas market. She spontaneously embarks on an adventure with the seductive stranger. Hours later, the detective receives a cryptic message with GPS coordinates. Without informing her colleague Tessa Ott, Grandjean drives to the location. There she finds a body that reminds her of an earlier case: a double murder, the solution of which laid the foundation for her meteoric police career. An antique coin in the mouth of the poisoned victim causes the investigator to disappear. While Tess and public prosecutor Anita Wegenast are getting to grips with the case, Grandjean tries to make up for a fatal mistake on her own. She believes that the perpetrator, who took his own life in prison, had an accomplice. Or is there a copycat? When Grandjean meets Marek again, however, she has no idea who he really is...

A young woman is arrested in an Asian shop. She is completely beside herself. Her clothes, hands and face are covered in blood. She is holding a knife in one hand. Did she commit murder? And what about the "Chinese dog" that is said to have seen everything? The Dortmund homicide squad team is initially in the dark. But then the fine gold chain that the young woman is wearing around her neck provides a clue to her identity. A jeweler recognizes the piece of jewelry: he had made the valuable chain several years ago for the Dortmund steel dynasty Haiden family. The suspect is the 25-year-old daughter of the factory owner family. She claims to have killed someone, but can't remember anything. All in all, a murky case with traces from the Ruhr area to China.