A man who accused a catholic bishop of abusing him when he was a child dies in the Austrian city Salzburg. Everyone except his widow and the eccentrical detective Simon Brenner keeps silent and believes that the man killed himself.

How does someone feel when they suddenly find out that they are not their parents' son? A world collapses for the up-and-coming star lawyer Max when the Prater landlady Gabi introduces herself as his birth mother at his engagement party. Max gets out and tries to build a new life. In the process, he finds new friends and a new love far away from his family's luxury villa - between the Prater inn, Danube boatmen and racecourse. His greatest opponents are the influential, unscrupulous father - also a lawyer - and his own short temper. But Max has learned to fight - "Now more than ever".

In a criminal trial at the Berlin district court, in which the accusation of rape is being heard, it is one statement against the other - a seemingly insoluble dilemma, both legally and humanly, that has enormous explosive power. Because beyond the professional and private future of two people, it is about nothing less than the values and prejudices that define us as a society. It is a case of high public attention: the well-known TV presenter Katharina Schlüter and the industrialist Christian Thiede have had a secret affair that has lasted for years, and now they are sitting opposite each other in the courtroom as hostile parties. On the witness stand, Schlüter describes how what was initially consensual sex in Thiede's apartment turned into rape. But are circumstantial evidence sufficient? Experts and witnesses are questioned, and an unexpected turn of events doesn't make it any easier for the court to decide on credibility and truth.

1974, the year of the oil crisis and car-free day. Things are going haywire for the Redlich and Berkovitz families. Elfi Redlich finds her supposed great love in Ireland. Daughter Moni invests her 15,000 Schilling marriage premium in her first apartment. Son Charlie's success as a rock musician is overshadowed by drug problems. Rafi Berkowitz falls in love with the granddaughter of the old Nazi Ulmendorff, of all people, and the bad-hearted Hasak causes the next catastrophe.

Because of its name, the small Austrian town of Bad F* is a tourist attraction—until a landslide cuts it off from the rest of the country. Three years later, a murder sets a multitude of devastating developments in motion...