The director who wrote the Hamadys’ end now films the moment it became inevitable

There is something structurally unusual about returning to film an origin story when you already know — and have already shown audiences — how it ends. Özgür Yıldırım directed all three seasons of 4 Blocks, Germany’s most decorated crime series, building the Hamady family’s empire from its peak to its ruin over 18 episodes. Now, with 4 Blocks Zero, he goes back to 1990s Berlin to show the moment that empire first became possible — and, from his own vantage point, the moment when its eventual destruction was already written in.

4 Blocks (2017–2019) earned the kind of recognition German television rarely receives internationally: the Grimme-Preis, six German Television Awards including Best Drama Series, and a devoted following that watched Kida Khodr Ramadan’s Toni Hamady become one of the most compellingly drawn crime protagonists on European television. The show rendered Arab-German Berlin the way The Wire rendered Baltimore — a neighborhood as narrative, a world with its own internal logic and its own sense of tragedy. That reputation gives 4 Blocks Zero an unusually charged mandate.

Sonnenallee street scene in Neukölln, Berlin, late afternoon — Sonnenallee, Berlin-Neukölln. Photo: Leonhard Lenz / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Set in the early 1990s, the series follows the Hamady family’s arrival from Lebanon: Malik (Rami Fadel Khalaf), determined to build stability for his four children and mother-in-law amid relentless prejudice; Ali, the boy who will one day become Toni Hamady (Tareq Nassery), before he becomes the man Yıldırım spent three seasons undoing; and Abbas (Soufiane El Mesaudi), his brother. When Ibrahim (Tariq Al-Saies), released from prison after eight years, returns carrying a dangerous secret, the family’s precarious attempt at a legitimate life begins its long, irreversible tilt.

The scripts were written by head writer Bernd Lange (The Empress), alongside Bahar Bektaş, Natalie Zoghbi, and Hassan Akkouch, who played Maruf in the original series. Hüseyin Tabak co-directs with Yıldırım. Further cast includes Fatima Khanfour as grandmother Hanin, Luis Vorbach as Vince Kerner, alongside Bella Dayne, Mark Waschke (Dark), Enno Trebs (Köln 75), and Samir Salim (Sun and Concrete). In the announcement, the studio describes the series as “a family caught between bureaucracy, politics, and social exclusion, determined to build a new life in Germany.”

4 Blocks Zero debuts September 25 on HBO Max, with new episodes rolling out weekly. The eight-part German HBO Original is produced by W&B Television — Quirin Berg, Max Wiedemann, and Marcus Welke — for HBO Max, with Matthias Junge and Özgür Yıldırım as executive producers. Anke Greifeneder oversees editorial direction for HBO Max. The production received support from the German Motion Picture Fund and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

The central question 4 Blocks never quite posed — what does it cost a family to survive in a country that treats them as provisional — is now, it seems, the whole subject.

Tags: hbo max, 4 Blocks Zero, 4 Blocks, Özgür Yıldırım, W&B Television