Ines Nieri

10-year-old Pauline lives with her single mother. Her father left the family a long time ago and now her mother is newly in love.

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.

In 1957 Berlin, Renate, Angelika, and Karin have known one another since they were children. Renate has the idea that the three of them should accept New Zealand’s invitation to young German women to emigrate and find a new home abroad. Whereas Karin is mostly interested in adventure and Angelika wants to escape her past as a prostitute, Renate hopes to finally locate her father, who emigrated to New Zealand 20 years earlier.