Diana Staehly

About twenty years ago, Germany got to know Bernd Stromberg and his team from the claims department at CAPITOL Insurance. Back then, there was nothing vegan in the cafeteria, and bullying and sexism were commonplace in the office. Since then, the world of work has changed enormously. But has Bernd Stromberg changed too?

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In a cold future world everybody who is single drops dead. Which means that Tim - who recently got dumped by his girlfriend - has a serious problem. None of the women he meets at a speed dating event strike a chord with him. His last chance is Denise - or better said a typo called Dennis. As to Tim being straight, hey, there's a pill for that. Or is there?

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of “Capitol-Insurance” is due – that's what the bosses thought. All employees are invited to join the party in a hotel. However, rumors say the company's not doing very well. To avoid unemployment due to the possible shutdown of the smaller branch office the only option is to move to the headquarters. Now that's the ultimate challange for Stromberg, who is notoriously trying to be the example of a department manager, gathering all of his employees behind him.

A noble prostitute is found dead in the toilet of a trendy club. Actually a normal case for Chief Inspector Lukas Laim - he would not know this woman intimately. In addition, the case gets an unexpected twist: Laim and his assistant Tim Berners encounter in the customer file of the victim on the top managers of a pharmaceutical company. Suddenly the sexual offense becomes a serious case of white-collar crime.

Colonel Mortimer's son Gregory, his pride and joy, returns to the ancestral Cornish estate by the sea for the summer after loosing that year's only Horse Guards officer promotion to his neighbor-buddy Eric. By ancestral tradition, that means another delay too for his long-planned marriage with neighbor's daughter Rebecca, who already doubts if the are actually in love. Mortimer's new housekeeper Elisabeth proves irresistible for father (platonically) and son, but is held back by a family secret concerning her late mother Catherine. Eric also has a confession to make.

Sophie, a successful publishing editor in her mid-30s, is happy enough to be single. But deep down she'd love to have her own family. Then she meets Fritz Mertens: a newly-divorced dentist open to new relationships--but with no strings attached, please. He has enough of those already in the shape of his 12-year-old son Vincent, who lives part-time with him and part-time with his mother in Munich. Sophie and Fritz fall in love, but can there be a future for a "second-hand" man and a woman with her own hopes for happiness?

The subject of male prostitution gets a distinctly zany and offbeat twist in Stellungswechsel (AKA Special Escort), Maggie Peren's tale of five male underdogs who promulgate themselves as female escorts in the city of Munich. Of that group, we meet policeman Gy, in hot water with his insurance company and enduring the vicissitudes of an on-again, off-again romance with comely Daphne; twentysomething Lasse, who lives with his mom and is pathetically henpecked by her; Giselher, a chronically unemployed former manager; Frank, a philologist who spends his days as a house husband; and Olli, a deli proprietor whose business is rapidly going under. These five conjure up the wild idea of charging for liaisons with emotionally needy women, but the scheme doesn't exactly go as planned - as none can even begin to anticipate the eccentricities or oddities of the female clients who turn up in response to their offer.