The owners of a dive bar in Brooklyn, Horace and Pete, along with bar regulars share their experiences and lives with each other while drinking or working at the bar.

Raymond "Red" Reddington, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, surrenders in person at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He claims that he and the FBI have the same interests: bringing down dangerous criminals and terrorists. In the last two decades, he's made a list of criminals and terrorists that matter the most but the FBI cannot find because it does not know they exist. Reddington calls this "The Blacklist". Reddington will co-operate, but insists that he will speak only to Elizabeth Keen, a rookie FBI profiler.

A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.

When John Spears (Paul Conway) is arrested on suspicion of murdering his neighbour, detectives Kenosha (Jenny Agutter) and Frett (Jeremy Bulloch) are brought in to investigate the crime. As she spends time with the uncommunicative Spears, Kenosha becomes darkly fascinated by the suspect and soon realises there is much more to the case than meets the eye. Delving into his past, she discovers a man traumatised by a lost love and events so shocking that he can barely speak of them. When she is warned off by an American security firm, Spears retreats into his own world once more and appears to be a man on the edge of insanity.