Club Baywatch

David Hasselhoff isn’t big on sitting still. He jumps out of his chair and admires his new ornately carved desk (“Isn’t it great?”). He shows off pictures of his two young daughters (“I’m totally addicted to them. I have to look at them”). He proudly points out a framed MAD magazine “Baywatch” spoof on the wall (“It’s so irreverent, it’s incredible”).

And then all 6-foot-4 of this human dose of caffeine takes a rock-star stance and with a booming voice belts out the closing song for his new show, “Baywatch Nights.” Ah, to be serenaded by Mr. Chest Hair himself.

“So, what were we talking about?” he says with an impish smile. Oh, “Baywatch Nights,” the spinoff to Hasselhoff’s global mega-hit “Baywatch.”

With all of his unbridled energy, it comes as no surprise that Hasselhoff is executive producing and starring in a TV show that will run concurrently with “Baywatch,” the syndicated series that just happens to be the most-watched show on the planet with 1 billion fans in 140-plus countries, including those in the United States who would never admit to watching the luscious lifeguards strut their stuff on the beach.

But, Hasselhoff explains, “Baywatch Nights” is no “Baywatch.” It’s a whole new game of beach ball. Off with the sunblock and swimsuits. “Baywatch Nights,” arriving in late September on KCOP, deals with the gritty reality of what happens down by the waterfront when the sun sets.

To give a little introduction, Hasselhoff pops a tape with the show’s opening into his office VCR. He cranks up the volume. “This is cool,” says the enthusiastic one.

At first, its seems like one of those “What a difference a day makes” commercials. Hasselhoff’s character Mitch Buchannon, the “Baywatch” hunk in trunks by day, is transformed into an Armani-clad stud muffin when night falls. From the voice-over, it’s clear that this fatherly head lifeguard now moonlights as a hip private investigator. He co-owns a detective agency with his buddy Garner Ellerbee (GregAlan Williams), the former beach patrol cop from “Baywatch.” And the two get into some pretty dangerous situations. Watch Hasselhoff run away from a blown-up building. “That was actually pretty scary,” he says.

Hasselhoff has coined a name for this genre: “light action humor.” For in addition to those crazy P.I. capers like going undercover in drag and dressing like a chicken to solve a case, “Baywatch Nights” is a buddy show. And Hasselhoff claims that he and Williams have major chemistry. “There’s a charisma and a timing that’s unspoken,” he says. So expect a little bit of “I Spy” (Hasselhoff’s favorite show) and a little bit of “Moonlighting.”

And a lot of David Hasselhoff.

“Basically, I’ve taken all of the ingredients I think I’ve done successfully before. Part of ‘Knight Rider,’ part of ‘Baywatch.’ And, you know, David Hasselhoff.” Indeed, modesty isn’t big at so-called Camp Baywatch, the Culver City warehouse where Hasselhoff has his office, and where both “Baywatch” and it’s noir version are shot. Note the scantily clad women roaming around the place.

To think that Hasselhoff, 43, didn’t even want to do another TV show when All American, “Baywatch’s” distributor, approached him. “I said, ‘I’m burned out on series. I want to go on to movies.’ ” But the multimillion-dollar deal he was offered to do “Baywatch Nights,” which makes him the highest-paid actor in syndicated TV, resuscitated him better than any “Baywatch” lifeguard could have.

“So here I am,” he says. “I kind of foresee this year as ‘Baywatch’ and ‘Baywatch Nights,’ and then I’ll start weaning myself out of ‘Baywatch’ and focus on ‘Baywatch Nights’ and features.”

In fact, he just turned down a “major, major, major, major movie. It just wasn’t right. I had the guts to turn it down because I believe in myself,” he says, sounding like inspiration guru Tony Robbins.

But “Baywatch Nights” is absolutely right, because Hasselhoff made it that way. “I said I’m not going to do the show unless I have 51% creative control. I want to do it my way,” he says, raising his anchorman-like voice, “or the highway.”

“And they said, ‘Whatever you want within the budget.’ ” Hasselhoff is clearly a man who knows what he wants: “I said I want blues. I want a nightclub. I want Lou Rawls ... “

And the King of Syndication gets what he wants. Hasselhoff persuaded Lou Rawls, a longtime friend, to co-star as the owner of the beachfront blues club--conveniently called “Nights”--which is in the same building as the detective agency and serves as the show’s hangout.

Sure, “Baywatch” might have blue skies, blue sea and blue-eyed Pamela Lee (formerly Anderson), but “Baywatch Nights” has blues. Rawls thinks the musical element of the show, including performances by Rawls himself and some of his friends who will guest star, will be a draw. Gladys Knight, Ray Charles and Nancy Wilson are on the list.

“They all do guest spots on the ‘Tonight Show’ and that sort of thing, but this is different. They get to do some drama, too,” says Rawls with his trademark raspy voice.

The exposure should be good for the guests, and for Rawls. “Being on a series will open up new doors for me. I’ll be exposed to many, many more people than I’ve had exposure to.”

Plus, Rawls likes promoting blues on the show. “That’s the music that people are going back to,” he says, noting the popularity of the House of Blues club in West Hollywood.

And Hasselhoff, a musician who has a thriving Euro rock-star career despite the fact that his music hasn’t quite caught on in the States, authoritatively agrees: “Blues are hot.”

But don’t expect Hasselhoff, also known as the Elvis of Germany, to use the “Baywatch Nights” club to showcase his own musical abilities. He will, however, sing the show’s main theme and end titles with Rawls.

The club on the “Baywatch Nights” set is a dark, Art Deco-styled place with blue walls and a pool table. The set is empty on this summer morning, because after wrapping the first 10 episodes of “Baywatch Nights” earlier, Hasselhoff dove right into shooting an episode of “Baywatch.”

But 14-year-old Australian guitar phenom Nathan Cavaleri, who guested on this day’s episode of “Baywatch Nights,” is still hanging around the set, thrilled with his TV experience. “It was excellent,” he says. The real fun, though, wasn’t jammin’ with blues great B.B. King, the episode’s other musical guest. That was “um, pretty exciting. But I’ve jammed with him before.”

The really great part: “Having an action role. I get thrown in a car. I get threatened.”

Williams as private eye Ellerbee also enjoys the action. “That’s playing in the backyard. The running, the jumping, the boxing, the scuba-diving and whatnot. That’s right up my alley,” says the actor after toweling off from a scene in which he chased a bad guy through a nearby car wash.

Williams also is excited by a more important element of the show. While “Baywatch” celebrates blondeness and has few characters of color, “Baywatch Nights” is taking a more multiethnic, multicultural approach. “It’s grand,” says Williams, who is African American. “You spend five years on ‘Baywatch’ and you’re sort of there and you’re not there. You’re kind of invisible. And then to emerge into a spinoff with such visibility is--wow.”

But being the lead African American character comes with a certain responsibility. Williams is on alert for stereotypes within the scripts. “A few weeks ago I found a script that I thought portrayed a stereotype. I went to the producers--and the next day it was gone.”

“Baywatch Nights” is indeed different from “Baywatch,” but does it veer too far from the beauties-and-the-beach formula to ensure it will be as big a hit as the series nicknamed “Babewatch”? Will “Baywatch Nights” survive without the notorious babes in red Lycra?

Well, “Baywatch Nights” does have its own resident babe: Angie Harmon, the former model who plays Ryan McBride. She’s the third P.I. in the agency. And don’t forget Destiny, the New Age assistant in the office as played by Lisa Stahl.

Harmon describes how she was discovered by Hasselhoff when the two rode on the same MGM Grand jet on the way to the opening of a Planet Hollywood restaurant.

“I’m walking out and he’s like, ‘I’m David Hasselhoff. I’m a happily married man. I’m not attracted to you at all,’ ” she recalls, laughing. “And he took a deep breath and said, ‘I have this character on this show and you’re her and she’s you and you’ve got to come audition for it.’ ” And so Harmon, 22, got her first acting job and a great Hollywood story to tell all at once.

The character she plays, although gorgeous, is a different breed of babe. She’s a contemporary, strong woman. “I think Ryan’s out to prove that she can do anything a man can do, but better and funnier and cuter. But she’s not like anti-men or anything.

“I try to keep her not so strong that men look at her and go ‘yuck,’ but strong enough where women go, ‘I want to be like her,’ ” Harmon says.

Hasselhoff’s character Mitch certainly doesn’t say “yuck.” “Viewers are going to love the relationship between me and the girl,” he explains. “Sparks start to fly. It’s going to be, ‘Will they or won’t they?’ ”

Harmon already feels the pressure of living up to the “Baywatch” babe status of Pamela Lee and Alexandra Paul, stuck wearing Donna Karan and Armani. “We don’t have the bathing suits to rely on. It’s like, ‘OK, Angie, either you’ve got to be outstanding and nail this, or ...’ ”

But Hasselhoff is confident: “I think the girls on this show are infinitely more sexy with clothes than without their clothes.”

Overall, Hasselhoff says the show is more sophisticated than “Baywatch.” He calls it “James Bondy.”

“I wanted to do something that’s a little bit hipper, for more of an adult audience. Our range on ‘Baywatch’ is really 5-year-olds through grandmothers. This show has more of an edge.”

The edge may be too sharp for the international audience. Hasselhoff doesn’t think the show will have the worldwide appeal of “Baywatch,” even though it has sold to about 20 markets overseas. “ ‘Baywatch’ has the whole mystique of Southern California. The sun, the sand, the fast cars, the good-looking girls.”

For a nanosecond, he wonders if the new show will take off. “You never know,” he says, his “you pout, you’re out” philosophy toned down momentarily. “Maybe the audience is going to get sick of me because I’m on television five days a week. ...”

That irrepressible Hasselhoff optimism is quickly restored. “My mom and dad like it,” he says with broad Mitch Buchannon grin. “If my mom and dad like it, it’s a hit.”

“Baywatch Nights” will air Fridays at 10 p.m. on KCOP beginning Sept. 29. “Baywatch” airs weekdays and Sundays at 7 p.m. on KCOP .