Shannon Burke brings an interest in class and hard-pressed people to adventure storytelling. In Outer Banks, made with Josh and Jonas Pate, we like the friendships more than the increasingly strenuous efforts to keep everybody in trouble.
Fi1m perspective
In Outer Banks (2020), a treasure hunt gives a group of young people something to do together, and that company is the chief pleasure. Shannon Burke created the series with Josh Pate and Jonas Pate, placing their ensemble in a coastal community divided by money. It is enjoyable teenage adventure, though its plotting needs indulgence. We warmed to the friendships as the search gave them room to grow. Those stretches make a stronger case for staying with the series than another burst of danger.
Burke's first two novels, Safelight (2004) and Black Flies (2008), drew on his experience as a New York paramedic, examining emergency work and its moral strain. With Into the Savage Country (2015), he moved into historical adventure in the American West. That change of setting helps make sense of Outer Banks: adventure was already part of his writing, alongside an interest in class and people with little money. The earlier emergency-work fiction also reached the screen in Asphalt City (2023), an adaptation of Black Flies.
The difficulty comes when Burke and the Pates keep increasing the stakes without finding believable reasons for the characters to act. Some complications seem to exist chiefly to prolong the series, and the young people are not always written fully enough to carry so much trouble. Exaggerated villains further reduce the pleasure of discovery. More damagingly, the constant emergencies leave less time for quiet exchanges, which would give the cast something to play beyond the latest crisis.
Burke and the Pates have given Outer Banks enough warmth to make its excesses worth tolerating, particularly if teenage adventure is already your sort of evening. We would like them to trust their cast with more conversation and fewer crises. Start with the opening season for the friendships, and give the plotting some latitude.
Biography
Shannon Burke is an American novelist and screenwriter. Born in Wilmette, Illinois, he studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating, he worked as a paramedic for the New York City Fire Department.
Burke has published four novels, including Safelight (2004) and Black Flies (2008), which draw on his paramedic experiences. He contributed to the screenplay for the film Syriana (2005) and is co-creator, writer and executive producer of the Netflix series Outer Banks (2020–), developed with Josh Pate and Jonas Pate. His novel Black Flies was adapted as the film Asphalt City (2023). He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
