Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ze Network’ on Amazon Freevee, Where David Hasselhoff, Playing Himself, Is Embroiled In A Bizarre German Adventure

Ze Network (Amazon Freevee), which debuted in Germany in 2022, is an eight-episode comedy-thriller from creator, director, and writer Christian Alvart starring David Hasselhoff as a version of himself who accepts a role in a German theater production, only to watch reality distort all around him as secrets from The Cold War burble up, old spy networks are revived, and new assassins maybe start gunning for him. It was already getting a little difficult for the aging Hasselhoff to find meaningful work, but this is ridiculous. Or maybe he’s dreaming the whole thing?   

ZE NETWORK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Pula, Croatia, where a drone shot takes us through the colonnades of an ancient Roman amphitheater and three sports cars are in pursuit of a woman with an eyepatch. It’s difficult, because her vehicle is equipped with countermeasures. And suddenly David Hasselhoff is there. 

The Gist: The opening sequence of Ze Network feels a little too on the nose to actually be some kind of German-language Fast and the Furious, and that proves true when it’s revealed as a ruse. Sure, Hasselhoff is in the movie. “But it blows donkey balls!” he complains to his agents in a Los Angeles screening room. He’s sick and tired of doing one-off cameo roles that play – or prey – on his legacy. “Last week I was doing a Mitch Buchannon, and two Michael Knights in May!” He wants a real role, something that he can sink his teeth into, but his dismissive lead agent Marty (Harvey Friedman) seems ready to write off The Hoff.

As a talent agent herself, David’s daughter Tara (Athena Strates) wants to help her dad out, nepo babies be damned. She teams with Bill (Gareth McGregor), another entertainment industry greenhorn, to book Hasselhoff in a play called Supernatural Man of Mystery by Demory Corban. And after a red eye flight, he lands in Berlin to take the gig. Only it’s not in Berlin. It’s “east of Berlin,” in Görlitz, an old city on the Polish border. And jet lagged and disoriented, David meets Henry Hubchen (playing a version of himself), a veteran actor who will also be in the play; the show’s producer, Chloe (Anja Herden); its director, Batur (Serkan Kaya); and young actors Tom Maria Dunckel (Max Befort) and Andra Shandra (Maike Jüttendonk). 

“We’ve met before,” Henry tells David, and he explains that in the old days, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German actors like him did double duty as intelligence officers, and big American stars like the Hoff of the 1980s were targeted by the state, either to be corrupted or turned, if they were already agents of a spy network themselves. If Hasselhoff was disoriented before, he’s completely bewildered now, and he doesn’t have the strength to complain when Andra Shandra whisks him off to a late night club. When they finally end up at a creepy hotel where the play’s production seems to be the only guests, David just wants to get some sleep. But Andra and her accomplices have other ideas.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ze Network creator Christian Alvart also brought the dark German cop thriller Dogs of Berlin to Netflix. And there’s a meta quality here, with Hasselhoff and Hubchen playing takes on themselves in a show with takes of its own about show business and star power, and that makes us think of stuff like Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Other Two, or the British comedy Sick of It with An Idiot Abroad star Karl Pilkington.

Our Take: There’s a running gag in the opening moments of Ze Network that finds an exhausted David Hasselhoff nodding off, only to awaken with everything around him different. Is it a product of his getting older? The result of torturous jet lag? Or is it just the vibe of this series, which seems to want to make its viewer feel just as disoriented as the actor playing himself at its center? At only a half-hour, episodes of Ze Network don’t have time to build anything substantial, and so it works with that, throwing lots of elements at the wall simultaneously. Some of it is funny, some of it is curious, some of it doesn’t land, and some of it is like wrapping our disorientation inside of a WTF blanket, like a black-and-white flashback to 1988 that features actors playing younger versions of Hasselhoff and Henry Hubchen with what resembles Midjourney renderings of the actors’ features plastered over their own.

Is Ze Network a comedy that skewers the vapid trappings of show business? Yes. Is it also a dark comedy with something to say about the spy vs. spy antics of a Cold War-era partitioned Germany? Seemingly also yes. And on top of all of that, is it an exercise in the surreal, for both Hasselhoff in the series and we the viewers? Again, it seems like this is also a yes. Ze Network might need a few episodes to clarify these questions for itself. But in the meantime, there is a real spark between Hasselhoff and Henry Hubchen, both playing veteran actors who’ve forgotten more about the entertainment biz than their younger peers might ever know. It’s worth sticking with where these two take us, to see if it leads Ze Network to find its true tone and footing.     

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, anyway.

Parting Shot: The Hoff, who at this point hasn’t slept in nearly 24 hours, has finally arrived at his hotel, only to discover that it’s in a state of perpetual half-renovation and looks more like a spooky Hungarian palace. Sleep will also have to keep waiting, because an unexpected commotion has broken out in his room.  

Sleeper Star: Maike Jüttendonk makes an immediate impression here as Andra Shandra, an influencer (“Followers expect new content! Do you know how exhausting it is to feed the demands of two million people everyday?”) and aspiring actress who attaches herself to Hasselhoff – in more ways than one – on his first night in Görlitz.

Most Pilot-y Line: 1988. East Berlin. Before the Wall fell. In those days, Henry tells David, it was natural for intelligence officers to try and get a leg up on visiting celebrities. “Just the basic standard scheme to get kompromat. Drug you, get to your room, take compromising photos…maybe a Super 8 with you and a hooker/agent…”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Ze Network gets off to a start that’s as disorienting for the viewer as it is for the version of David Hasselhoff that stars in the show. But it’s definitely ambitious, there is promise in its weird energy, and at its center there’s real chemistry between Henry Hubchen and The Hoff. 

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges