10 unforgettable characters who made Wilmington a TV destination

With no fewer than three series currently shooting in the Wilmington area — "Our Kind of People" for FOX, and "Echoes" and "Florida Man" for Netflix — the Port City is experiencing a renaissance in television production.

The current explosion of shows aside, plenty of memorable TV show characters have been created here. Here are 10 you might remember.

Ben Matlock, 'Matlock' (Andy Griffith)

I'll go out on a limb and say the title character created by Andy Griffith remains the best-known TV character ever created in Wilmington. (The ABC series shot here in the early and middle 1990s.)

Griffith was a great actor — if you don't think he has range, check out his villainous turn in 1957 film "A Face in the Crowd" — and in Ben Matlock he created the TV character version of comfort food, homey and jokey and familiar and downright delectable in the way his canny country lawyer solved mysterious crimes each week.

Kenny Powers, 'Eastbound & Down' (Danny McBride)

I was trying to find quotes from this Danny McBride character that would be suitable for a family newspaper/website, but after a while I gave up. In Kenny Powers, a retired professional baseball player who returns to his North Carolina hometown after being banned from the game in disgrace, McBride created a comedic character who was equally profane, self-regarding, clueless and entertaining.

"Eastbound & Down" ran on HBO from 2009-2013.

Jackie Qui?ones, 'Hightown' (Monica Raymund)

If you've not yet gotten hip to "Hightown," about an alcoholic National Marine Fisheries Service agent who gets her life together after becoming obsessed with solving a murder, the gritty, twisty and very real show is worth getting a subscription to Starz, where the show airs. (The show's second season shot in Wilmington last year.) Monica Raymund plays the agent in question, Jackie Quinones, and she makes her character's struggles and ambition compelling to watch as she interacts with her town's seedy underworld.

Pacey Witter, 'Dawson's Creek' (Joshua Jackson)

Before there was Team Edward or Team Jacob (remember "Twilight," everyone?), mega-popular teen drama "Dawson's Creek" had Team Dawson and Team Pacey. James Van Der Beek played the dopey, earnest Dawson Leery, but it was Joshua Jackson's jokey, likable Pacey Witter who, for me, really captured the essence of the show, which was formulaic, goofy and often kind of dumb, but eminently watchable. Michelle Williams and Katie Holmes also had starring roles in the series, which shot in Wilmington in the late '90s and early 2000s.

Peyton Sawyer, 'One Tree Hill' (Hilarie Burton)

As with "Dawson's Creek," it's basically impossible and essentially unfair to pick just one character from this drama, which shot in Wilmington for nearly a decade starting in the early 2000s. If I'm going with just one, though, Hilarie Burton's Peyton Sawyer really captured the wild, at times reckless spirit of the show, whether she was riding out an emotionally draining love triangle, fending off multiple stalkers or finding out (spoiler alert!) that she was adopted. And then there was the whole "going into a coma" plot line. Burton has since discussed the sometimes-uncomfortable positions she was put in as an actress on the show, but her performance over the course of six seasons helped make "One Tree Hill" the cultural behemoth and fan favorite it remains to this day.

Abbie Mills, 'Sleepy Hollow' (Nicole Beharie)

In this supernatural Fox drama, which shot in Wilmington in the middle of last decade, the legends of the past come to life in the modern day, with the Headless Horseman and other spooky creatures haunting the locals. Amid all the fantastical goings-on, the performance by Nicole Beharie — an estimable actress who carried the wonderful 2020 film "Miss Juneteenth" — as the detective Abbie Mills was at once strong, vulnerable and ultimately grounding. Predictably, the show couldn't survive after Beharie's character was killed off in its third season, as it was canceled after season four. Like Hilarie Burton, Beharie has gone on record recounting some of her troubling experiences while working on the show.

Big Jim Rennie, 'Under the Dome' (Dean Norris)

Danny McBride's Kenny Powers is more of an antihero, so I'll have to give Dean Norris credit for creating what might be the best portrayal of a villain in Wilmington TV history. In the drama "Under the Dome," which aired on CBS during the middle of last decade and is based on the sprawling Stephen King novel, a mysterious, impenetrable dome drops down on the town of Chester's Mill.

More: WilmOnFilm Flashback: CBS' 'Under the Dome'

Norris plays James "Big Jim" Rennie, a corrupt, small-town councilman whose lust for power goes out of control as the town becomes totally isolated. He kills a bunch of people and terrorizes others, and Norris is basically the picture of a chilling, if charming, remorseless psychopath. Fun stuff.

Jenelle Evans, 'Teen Mom'

The only "character" on this list who's a real person, Oak Island's Jenelle Evans (now Janelle Eason) shot to fame on MTV reality show "16 and Pregnant" in the late 2000s, later appearing in reality shows "Teen Mom" and "Teen Mom 2."

Tabloid scrutiny and a court case or two followed, and you can continue to follow the exploits of Janelle Evans in the (online) pages of such publications as People and The Sun.

Angela Vaughn, 'Our Kind of People' (Yaya DaCosta)

In this new FOX show that showcases the Wilmington area, Yaya DaCosta plays the lead character, a woman with a hardscrabble Boston upbringing whose late mother was a maid for rich Blacks on the Cape Cod town of Oak Bluffs. The soapy show centers on Angela's mission to break into the Black elite by selling her line of hair products, Eve's Crown, named for her late mother, and DaCosta is the picture of determination as Angela confronts the barriers in her way.

More: Wilmington-shot 'Our Kind of People' premieres on Fox, showcases region and Black issues

Indiana Jones, 'The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles' (George Hall, Sean Patrick Flanery, Corey Carrier)

Thought we forgot about this series from the early 1990s partially shot in Wilmington? Not a chance. Indiana Jones — the role was originated, of course, by Harrison Ford in the 1981 movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" — was played by three people in the series, which was structured so that Old Indy would introduce tales about his younger self, meeting historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Pancho Villa. The Canadian actor George Hall played the aged Indiana, with Sean Patrick Flannery portraying Teen Indy in some flashbacks and Corey Carrier playing Boy Indy in other episodes.

Contact John Staton at 910-343-2343 or [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: 10 unforgettable TV characters created in Wilmington NC