"The Mistress of the Big City" is a Russian melodramatic mini-series about a modest girl named Zoya from the Moscow suburbs. She brilliantly passes her final exams and becomes a student at a prestigious pedagogical institute in the capital. However, her dreams of a bright future are shattered overnight when her father dies and her stepmother deceitfully takes control of Zoya's inheritance. Now Zoya can only rely on herself. To make matters worse, she is expelled from the university and evicted from the dormitory, but a stranger named Raya comes to her rescue.