To kafe tis Charas

The instrumental opening of "Beautiful Eggs" by Spike Jones serves as the opening and closing theme song in Seasons 1-3 and as the opening theme as of Season 4.

The original opening credits show photos of the cast as children inside children's drawings of the village's buildings (the town hall, Chara's cafe, the bakery etc.), while a drawing of a hot air balloon flies above. The Season 4 opening credits feature the same children's drawings (without the childhood photographs), transforming one by one into updated 3D cartoon renderings, with exception of Chara's cafe, which is shown burning down (reflecting the fourth season's central plot point).

For the show's return in 2019, a new closing theme called "Put on a coffee" (Βάλε ενά καφέ), was recorded by Michalis Hatzigiannis, with lyrics by Haris Romas, and was a released as a single to coincide with the premiere of Season 4.

The story begins in Athens, with Chara Chaska (Renia Louizidou), a single mother who works at an advertising agency. When her boyfriend and fellow co-worker steals her ideas for a campaign and gets promoted instead of her, she decides to quit her job and move with her 10-year-old daughter Valia (Effie Rassia) to the remote mountain village of Kolokotronitsi (Κολοκοτρωνίτσι, named after Theodoros Kolokotronis), in Arcadia, where she has just inherited some property.

Chara's hopes for a peaceful life away from the cutthroat environment of the big city are quickly dashed when she meets the village's traditionalist and misogynist mayor Periandros Popotas (Περίανδρος Πώποτας), who has a pathological hatred of everything "modern" and views the very presence of an Athenian woman with an illegitimate child in his village as a threat to his idyllic community's motto of "Order and Morality" (Τάξις και Ηθική). A British-educated folklorist with a mysterious past, Periandros lives with his ten-year-old son Emmanuel, who develops a crush on Valia, and their housekeeper Tasia.

Popotas is particularly outraged at Chara's plans to open a modern cafeteria (which she calls "To cafe tis Charas", literally "The cafe of joy", a pun on her name) and rallies the villagers to boycott her.

The first season focuses on Chara's struggle to open her café against Periandros' machinations and follows her slowly winning the villagers over to her side, culminating in her attempt to unseat Popotas at municipal elections in the penultimate episode. The second season explores the protagonists' backstories, through the arrival in the village of various characters from their past. The third season has Chara and Periandros develop feelings for each other, and follows their doomed efforts to find a way to live to together despite their deeply contrasting beliefs. Season 4, set 14 years after the third season's cliffhanger ending, follows a now adult Valia returning to the village to investigate the cafés destruction in a mysterious fire.

Other characters include Periandros' sister, Stavroula, her adulterous, lazy and linguistically challenged husband, Vangellis, who as the village's coffee house owner is also Chara's main competitor, the village idiot Trelantonis whom Chara takes in, the bakers, Lefteris and Kanella, who have a long-running feud with the greengrocers, Tasos and Chaido over a fig tree (only to have their feud resolved when their children, Billy and Gogo get together and eventually marry), the village's priest Papa-Triantafyllos and his gossiping wife Marika and Aglaia, the wacky teacher who is madly in love with Periandros and fantasizes about marrying him.

• The fictional village of Kolokotronitsi is portrayed by Karia village in Argolis in the Peloponnese
• Effie Rassia, the actress who plays Chara's daughter Valia, is the niece of protagonist Haris Romas in real-life
• The scenes for the café were in fact shot in Kallithea, Athens
• The actor who plays Trelantonis, Charis Grigoropoulos is actually married to Foteini Demiri that plays Kanela

The show features an eclectic soundtrack which makes heavy use of tracks from classic movies, as well as mid-20th century Greek and foreign hits and classical music. Alan Silvestri, Joaquin Rodrigo and Jon Brion play a lot through the series. For example, in a scene where Aglaia performs voodoo, in order to make Periandros fall in love with her, Halloween (1978 movie) theme song plays in the background. A number of songs were also composed and recorded by various prominent Greek artists especially for the series, with lyrics written by Haris Romas.

• To kafe tis Charas at IMDb