Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Sam – A Saxon’ On Hulu, A Drama About East Germany’s First Black Police Officer

The story of Samuel Meffire is a fascinating one; he was East Germany’s first police officer of African descent, but not long after German reunification he ended up being on the run in Africa after being accused of armed robbery. It’s a life that seems ripe for the docudrama treatment, and a new Hulu limited series documents Meffire’s rise and fall.

SAM – A SAXON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man with a backpack runs through a savannah in the Congo.

The Gist: He’s running to avoid soldiers who are after him. When he hides behind some rocks, the soldiers end up finding him. He keeps insisting that he’s a German national and shouldn’t be taken prisoner. The soldiers have no sympathy and haul him off. We see a graphic that says “1992.”

Flash back to 1989. “DRESDEN, DDR.” This is shortly before the Berlin Wall fell and Germany was reunified, and East Germany is still under Communist rule. The same man, Sam Meffire (Malick Bauer) is running here, this time after an ambulance. On a bridge, he’s stopped by a police vehicle, with one of the cops being Major Schreier (Thorsten Merten), one of the riot police’s senior officials. The professional footballer doesn’t have his ID with him, which would normally get him arrested.

Sam tells Schreier that he’s running after the ambulance because his girlfriend Antje (Luise von Finckh) is having their baby and he’s not allowed to ride with her. He quotes Kierkegaard to Schreier, and the major ends up giving him a ride to the hospital. He tells Sam that his squad can use someone as athletic and intelligent as he is.

As a Black man in East Germany, Sam faces overt racism every single day. A bus driver closes his doors as Sam approaches. During a football match, his coach won’t put him in, despite the fact that his team is losing and he’s one of their best players. So he puts himself in, to the jeers of a crowd spewing racial slurs.

On his walk back home, he’s encountered by the same group of racist fans who jeered him at the match, who gang up on him and beat him nearly unconscious. In desperation, he throws himself into the river to escape, only to almost drown when he’s hit in the temple with a bottle and he loses consciousness.

Bloodied but unbowed, he meets Antje at a church, where a speaker is talking about protests against the current government; Antje is an artist who will have an installation at an art show with that theme. Angry, he questions the protests, because to him, the government is keeping chaos from ruling the streets. He tells Antje that she can’t even fathom what he goes through every day.

This leads Sam to seek out Major Schreier, because he wants to join his riot police force. He even boldly runs past the guards at the police station in order to see him. When Schreier tells him the republic has many enemies, Sam tells him, “The Republic and I are in the same boat.”

He is recruited to attend the next training class, which of course Antje completely objects to. Sam attends and does well, putting him on course to be East Germany’s first Black police officer.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sam – A Saxon is ultimately a rise-and-fall story of a real-life figure in German history. Is the fall as extreme as it would be in a show like The Dropout? No, but there are similarities.

Our Take: Jörg Winger (Deutschland 83/86/89) co-created Sam – A Saxon with Chris Silber and Tyron Ricketts, and they do a good job in the first episode of showing just how high of a hill Sam Meffire had to climb to achieve what he did. His story is compelling, mainly because as a Black man he was a rarity in Communist East Germany, and the racism he suffered through every day was overt and, as we see in the first episode, potentially violent.

It certainly affected his view of the government, to the point where he was in opposition to Antje and her artistic community friends. The only thing protecting him is an institution like the riot police. Winger, Silber and Ricketts present Sam’s viewpoint unsparingly and objectively. It may seem like he wouldn’t be pro-government in those late Cold War-era days, but because of the racism he has to endure, it makes sense.

It’ll be interesting to see how Sam deals with reunification and what ends up sending him to the Congo. The media en res opening here actually serves a purpose, which shows us what kind of tumultuous journey Sam has taken in the three short years since he joined the riot police. It’s the same journey Germany itself took during those years. And where he finds himself after reunification likely reflects where many East Germans found themselves, with newfound freedoms but adrift in a more capitalist society that rewards achievement.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After his successful training weekend, knowing he’ll be taking the next step to joining the riot police, Sam enters the loft he, Antje and their son share with other artists, knowing everything has changed.

Sleeper Star: Luise von Finckh has a pivotal role as Antje, because it does seem like she’s going to be loyal to Sam, even though Sam is doing something that goes against every fiber of her being.

Most Pilot-y Line: In the montage during his entrance training, we see his name rise and fall in the rankings, and then we’re teased that he didn’t make it. That felt like something out of a hacky ’80s movie than a serious streaming drama from 2023.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The story of Sam Meffire that the writers of Sam – A Saxon portray is inspirational, but not in a hagiographic way; it’s the realistic portrait of a man caught between two worlds in a country that was rapidly changing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.