(TV SERIES) Outer Banks Season 1 - Better Than Expected Teenagers Treasure Hunt & Love Story

Last weekend there were not too many new movies/series on various platforms that I was really interested in, so I turned myself to the "not so new" series which I thought would be worthwhile to invest my time. After browsing through the list, I decided to give this a try as it seemed to have intriguing premise about treasure hunt. All right, I'll just head on with it now.

Brief Story Line

In a town located in the string of islands along North Carolina (known as Outer Banks), a group of local teenagers that consisted of their leader John B (Chase Stokes), his best friend J.J (Rudy Pankow), the smart kid Pope (Jonathan Daviss) and the only girl Kiara "Kie" (Madison Bailey) loved to hang around and surf all day. As locals who lived in the working-class neighborhood (referred as Pogues), there was a lot of tension with the wealthy people who lived on the other side of the town (referred to as Kooks).

Since his father has been missing at sea for a while, John B was living by himself and was working part time job with a wealthy businessman named Ward Cameron (Charles Esten - Nashville TV series etc) whose daughter Sarah (Madelyn Cline) was considered as princess of Kooks. She was dating a snobby guy named Topper (Austin North - I Didn't Do It TV series etc) who always hang out with Sarah's older brother Rafe (Drew Starkey).

John B came across something that led him to possibility of finding long lost treasure that his father has been searching for many years. Using the clues he had, John B together with his best friends tried searching for the treasure where he would find lots of obstacles that would really test their friendship. And so what would happen to these teenagers? Find them all in this surprisingly enjoyable series.

End of Brief Story Line

To be honest, I had seen this series trailer few times earlier but I was never interested before. And I was delighted to have given this a go as apparently the series was pretty entertaining. At first though I felt it might be a mistake as I did not find the Pogues teenagers life that interesting and they seemed to be just like typical teenagers who were just unhappy with their situation. But as the story progressed and when the lost treasure was brought into the picture, I got more excited.

As I said in the above story line, there were another group of Kooks teenagers who were basically like heaven and earth when compared to the Pogues. And their differences were really emphasized when these two groups met in a party which only enhanced the animosity. What I really loved about the first season of this series were how much developed the story was in the whole 10 episodes. In the final 3 episodes suddenly things felt very real for the teenagers with so many conflicts and even danger that made me excited and curious on how the story would continue. My favorite episodes were the season finale and also the 8th episode. 

Aside from the fast and huge story development, there were also things that I found to be quite generic in story about teenagers. You would definitely see young love plus fights among them. However, there were also more serious matters like the relationship with their parents. One thing that might be missing here was the various popular new songs, though it was not a huge factor for me. Btw the series was classified for 18+ due to language and some substance but there were no truly disturbing scenes to my opinion. Funny thing is I sometimes felt the series has a strong soap opera feeling.

The cast here did their job nicely, although one or two persons seemed too mature to be 16 year old. In fact when I checked on the actors and actresses portraying teenagers roles, mostly they were already in the mid or even late twenties. But if they were convincing to the audience, then who am I to judge? Of all the people who played in this series, I only have seen Adina Porter (The 100, True Blood TV series etc) playing as Sheriff Peterkin, while the rest were unfamiliar faces.

Overall I found myself to be enjoying this series a lot. I was really hooked on the Pogues teenagers since probably the second episode. I actually liked all of them but my most favorite was J.J who behind his seemingly strong and doesn't care attitude actually has a lot going on. I admired the creators of the series John Pate, Jonas Pate (who have several series' screenwriter credits to their names) and novelist Shannon Burke who were able to make interesting characters and story. So if you are into treasure hunt combined with teenagers love story and even revenge, then this one should be to your liking. And if you are still doubtful, this series has quite good rating and was already renewed for second season which meant it did not have abrupt cliffhanger ending.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars