S1.E2 ∙ Der Geburtstag

Beauty queen road trip about mother and daughter pageant pros going back home to Texas for a shot at redemption.

Yankie director Don Tyler faces mounting insecurity and declining health while on location in Beijing, so his assistant hires down-and-out camerman YoYo to take the reins. Scrambling, studio boss sells the sagging picture to a Japanese media company. But YoYo is determined to upstage the whole production by granting the director's wish to have a grand "comedy funeral". To raise the money for it, he auctions off advertising and sponsorships for the funeral to companies around the world. But wait...is Don getting better?

An incompetent barrister is assigned to defend an accused wife murderer.

Nikolay (played by Sergei Dontsov) has been fired from his job as a music teacher and has to live in the gym until he finds a place to stay. Finally, he gets a communal room in the apartment of Gorokhov (Viktor Mikhalkov (I)). The room's previous inhabitant, an old lady, has died a year ago, and yet her cat, Maxi, is still in the locked room, healthy and fat. Soon, Nikolai and his neighbours discover the mystery: there is a window to Paris in the room. That's when the comedy begins - will the Russians be able to cope with the temptation to profit from the discovery?

Vic Mathews (Tom Conti) teaches a remedial class at the Blessed Edith Semple School in Scotland. Some at the school are trying to discover the two more miracles that would promote the late Edith Semple to sainthood; Mathews, a non-believer, wishes the school would concentrate on teaching the children. He becomes confused, however, when he is involved in possibly miraculous events.

Five maids in São Paulo are observed in this episodic, impressionistic film. The women interact with each other, ride busses, work, and have longings: Rai for a husband, Créo for her lost daughter, Roxane for a career in modeling. Quitéria is naive, a gull for thieves. Cida has a husband and also a lover. While each woman gets what she wishes for (more or less), it doesn't always make things better. As Roxane says, no child sets out to become a maid. But once there, are all other doors closed?