Sleepy Hollow Season 1
I remember last year before this show aired when we did a podcast about the upcoming fall TV Season --saying that I was interested in watching it, but that I wasn't sure where they were going to pull off the Sleepy Hollow and Headless Horseman story. I mentioned that I love the Disney animated Sleepy Hollow as well as the Washington Irving short story which I have read numerous times. How in the world were they going to turn that into a TV show?
I just couldn't imagine how they would pull that off.
Well a really good strong Season 1 has answered that question.
The show features a resurrected Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) waking up in modern day Sleep Hollow being tasked with basically trying to stop the end of the world with the help of a female cop (Nicole Beharie). It has elements similar to Grimm and Fringe and is basically what Chris Carter's Millennium should have been. Ichabod's humor comes out of his fish out of water situation --as he tries to help unravel mysteries while making funny comments about the modern world. The problem with a fish out of water story is eventually the fish gets used to the water and I'm sure that as the story goes along this will slowly fade away as he gets used to how the modern world is. For season 1 this fish out of water story element adds a lot to the humor of the show which generally has very dark stories to tell. The chemistry between the main characters grew strong in Season 1 and the actual final episode felt big screen worthy.
The show does a great job of weaving in both modern day and flashbacks to Ichabod's time period. I had watched it from the beginning of Season 1 until about half way through the run when we got hooked on Castle and started watching that from Season 1 to current. So it wasn't until we were caught up on that show that I was able to revisit Season 1 of Sleepy Hollow --which finished really strong. It was a great idea from the producers who also worked on Fringe to bring John Noble along for the ride in the middle of Season 1. His great ability to add gravity to a story as he did so well on Fringe helped build to an amazing season finale. The Headless Horseman as one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was a great story concept and provides the show with a strong mythology. The show like a Fringe or X-Files definitely gets into the monster of the week type story lines- but the strength of the mythology and the pace that it moves forward is really a major strong point of the show. I won't spoil the Finale of Season 1 other than to say that it was a truly satisfying cliffhanger with many stories all coming to a head at the same time.
I've heard the season two falls into a bit of a sophomore slump --but I'm anxious to dig into it just he same.
