Manuel Hill

In 1981, all of Germany fears for the life of Johannes Erlemann, the eleven-year-old son of entrepreneur Jochem Erlemann, who was in custody on suspicion of fraud at the time of his son's abduction. The boy was snatched off his bicycle by his kidnappers, put into a van and then spend two terrible weeks in a shed in the forest fighting for his life having been chained to a wall and left without daylight, while the kidnappers try to extort a large ransom from his wealthy parents.

The stubborn bighead Gerhard Jäger, sentenced by the murder commission, reluctantly postpones service according to the regulations of the water protection police. Does he hate water like the plague? Until his new colleague Arda Turan, a former high-performance swimmer, brings a breath of fresh air to the WaPo team with her lively nature and direct Ruhrpottschnauze. Police chief Frank van Dijk, a real sonny boy and passionate water rat, is also on board. He spends every free minute jet skiing and flirting, but at WaPo he holds the wheel firmly in his hand. And then there is Lena Preser, the secretary of the troupe, who always gets amazing insights from the bottom of the ground with her perseverance. Under the strict eye of ambitious boss Maria Kruppka, the investigative team solves the most exciting cases and repeatedly clashes with the arrogant crime chief commissioner Carsten Heinrich from the main department.

Die Pfefferkörner is a German television series produced by Der Kinderkanal. The peppercorns are five friends from Hamburg: Jana Holstein Coutre, Natasha "Tascha" Jaonzäns, Philip "Fiete" Overbeck, Cem Gülec and Vivien "Vivi" Overbeck, Fiete's eight year old sister. After school, the young detectives meet at a high level of a spice warehouse of the company Overbeck & Associates, which belongs to Fiete and Vivi's parents in the first part, but is later given to Fiete and Vivi to look after. Here, in the historic warehouse district, the five friends have their headquarters. With smarts, combined delivery and support of the Internet, they find their cases here. The detectives convict polluters, animal dealers and drug smugglers. They also help each other with personal problems they encounter. Cem has lost his parents in a car accident and sometimes feels sad and lonely. Jana lives with her divorcee mother, a lawyer who is rarely at home. Natasha comes from Latvia. Her parents initially have very strict rules in terms of her education, that make Natasha unhappy. Fiete has problems showing his feelings and hides them behind grumpiness and hostility towards girls, until he falls in love with Natasha. Vivi is suffering from her role of the youngest member of the group. She believes that she must constantly struggle for recognition.

Faced with staff shortages, the chief of a Cologne police department convinces two retired homicide detectives to come back into the force. As their immediate superior is a young woman, a generational cultural clash is inevitable.