Per Scheel Krüger
Denmark, 2013. Police officers Carl Mørck and Hafez el-Assad, sole members of Department Q, which is focused on closing cold cases, investigate the disappearance of politician Merete Lynggaard, vanished when she and her brother were traveling aboard a ferry five years ago.
Sensitive 12-year-old Alf is the low man on his class' totem pole, and he's sick of it. Forming a secret, Machiavellian alliance with another student who also has grown weary of being bullied, he hatches a plan to throw a wrench into the well-oiled gears of the school social order. Everything seems to go according to plan, until Alf discovers that turning the tables on his tormentors has its own dire consequences.
Overwhelmed and extra-sensitive, Katrine has a hard time coping when her more relaxed boyfriend, Andreas, takes a business trip just days after the birth of their first child. The fussy baby has difficulty breastfeeding, and vulnerable, insecure Katrine feels like a failure. When Katrine’s emotionally withholding mother Lise consents to stay for a few days, the two quickly fall into what are clearly familiar dysfunctional behavior patterns.
This is the day when the lives of an intertwined group of people take a new direction. Everything they have taken for granted starts to change. While Anne and Ask's relationship succumbs to 'metal fatigue', Charlotte has to realise that her husband Carl may not be right for her. At the same time Bente has to decide if she is prepared to wait for ever for her lover, while her ex-husband Bjørn must face the pain of finally letting Bente go. The characters and their children are twirled around in an ever-increasing drama which peaks during the opening night of Hamlet. Anne is on stage as Ophelia, and the question remains: to be or not be responsible for one's own happiness.
Jesper Jensen is a successful IT salesman who stops at nothing, even if it means backstabbing his best friend. Being number one in the company and having a beautiful wife and a lovely home, Jesper seems to lead a perfect life, but one day his arrogance and self confidence hits him in the face like a boomerang and he loses everything overnight. Jesper is sentenced to do community service at a recycling center with the odd and funny characters Dion, Theodor, and Lotte. At first he looks down on these people and doesn't want to be associated with them. When he begins to loosen up, however, he discovers that he can learn a lot from their straight forward and honest approach to life.
Jonas Bechmann, a defense attorney, is a man of the system. Until the day he himself is accused of murder. Taking matters into his own hands, he throws himself into the hunt for a group of blackmailers who threaten to expose him as the killer. But nothing is what it appears to be, and the blackmail links back to his father's death under mysterious circumstances a year and a half earlier.
A satirical drama revealing the consequences of the Danish government's "New Copenhagen Criteria", a new policy aiming at securing the nation's survival. Citizens who fail to meet the criteria - those who have received more from society than what they have contributed - are eliminated.
