Moscow, 1952, mid-October, the XIX Congress of the CPSU had just ended. A communal apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovka. In one of the rooms lives the Petkevich family: Ariadna with her husband Boris and her parents, professor of philosophy Peter Kazimirovich and his wife Angelina Fyodorovna. For those few months that remained until Stalin's death, the family experiences a series of dramatic events. But on a background of terrible time, antisemitism, fabricated "case of doctors", denunciations and snitches, there are people who live their lives without losing dignity.
Nadia made her choice all her life with an eye to pleasing the environment, and by the age of 45 she was at an impasse. On the one hand, she has everything that many do not have - a family, work at the university, status. On the other hand, she does not feel that she is living her own life. But violence against one's inner world cannot go on forever. After her husband's betrayal, Nadya realizes that she cannot continue to live like this. At this moment, her niece Alena, who is fond of stand-up, moves into her apartment and encourages her aunt to change. Gradually finding harmony with herself, Nadia begins to change for the better. But will Nadia be able to defend her right to be herself - to dress the way she wants, do what she loves and meet a young guy - when relatives, friends and colleagues believe that she violates social norms and do everything to prevent this from happening?
A young man from the noble Bezsonov family — Nikolai — by chance and at the behest of his heart becomes an ordinary official of the detective police. His colleagues receive him coldly, and only an experienced official, Pyotr Romanovich Shchukin, sees in the young man the future star of the investigation. Together they are trying to uncover a chain of mysterious and dangerous crimes committed either in the city slums or in the boudoir of a socialite.
In a nostalgic Moscow of 1976, an unlucky actor meets a charismatic writer, a living classic of Soviet literature, who turns his life into a tragicomic farce with the artistic bohemia, foreign-currency prostitutes, the KGB staff and agents of the CIA.