Let’s say this upfront: Due to its relentless edgy content, the Starz hit series Outlander is not fit fare for youngsters or Puritans. Of the five elements mandating a Mature Audience rating – Adult Content, Language, Graphic Violence, Nudity and Strong Sexual Content – all episodes deliver a trifecta and many score the Full Monty. Nevertheless, if you can handle lead characters Jamie and Claire Fraser repeatedly setting the woods on fire – so to speak – then the show may serve quite well as your ticket to visualizing colonial North Carolina.
You have to bear up through three seasons of moans and mayhem before the thrill of a young character first uttering the words “New Bern” but once the action moves from Scotland to the New World, this city, Wilmington and other Old North State locales serve very well in providing striking visuals of mid-1700s grit and glamour. The viewer is treated to elaborate street scenes and even more elaborate costumes. Town, plantation and frontier life are on grand display and relations with North American Indians and the scourge of slavery are presented in a clear-eyed manner sure to educate as well as entertain.
It’s not perfect. Based upon the show’s exposition you’d think the distance from New Bern to the Blue Ridge mountains is a brisk walk of about 60 miles. Some of Outlander’s continuing plot points are, excuse this, outlandish. Time travel, witches and ghosts spring to mind. And the female creator, writers and directors have managed to fashion a male lead character, Jamie Fraser, who one critic called “a unicorn” – a man so handsome, brave, noble, patient, loyal, romantic and lethal as to never exist in nature.
But where else on television are you going to see Governor William Tryon and his lovely wife Margaret? Or learn about his elaborate palace and his struggles with the pesky Carolina Regulators? We are introduced to “Colonel” George Washington, wife Martha, and a myriad of other character, real and imagined, who serve to make manifest a long-gone era. And the show’s focal point, Claire Fraser, is appealing in every way.
Many here will already be quite aware of the series based on a small library of Outlander books written by the prolific Diana Gabaldon. Tryon Palace certainly is. The popularity of the books and television shows have spawned an Outlander tourism boom, and the folks managing the city’s magnificent historic gem are accommodating visitors with special tours and programs. Details are available online and right here within New Bern magazine.
Outlander brings history to life. Anyone not yet exposed to the extraordinary books or their streaming offspring may wish to do some time-traveling with Claire.
by Edward Ellis, Special Correspondent
Eddie Ellis is the author of New Bern History 101 and other works about Craven County’s rich heritage. He can be reached at flexspace2@aol.com.
More at edwardellis.com