October Horror 2013: 16 - Sleepy Hollow

Sleepy Hollow is a currently airing TV show on FOX, starring Nicole Beharie, Orlando Jones and Tom Mison along with recurring guest spots from Clancy Brown (WOO!) and John Cho.

The show aims to be a modernization and serialization of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a schoolteacher, and his ill-fated attempts to propose marriage to Katrina Von Tassel.  After a night of ghost stories, Ichabod is chased down by a Headless Horseman...the ghost of a Hessian mercenary killed by a stray cannonball during the Revolutionary War.  The Horseman does not vanish over a certain bridge as per legend, and instead supposedly kills Ichabod with a thrown, decapitated head.

We watched the first two episodes of Sleepy Hollow in which Ichabod Crane, a former British schoolteacher, has defected from Britain's army and joined George Washington in the fight for American Independence.  While on the field of battle he faces a hulking mercenary wearing a terrifying mask.  He decapitates the soldier, but is mortally wounded and soon passes from his injuries.  250 years later he wakes up buried under some weird waxy mess and dirt in a cave, and stumbles on to a highway where he's nearly run over by a truck.  At the same time, a headless horseman has risen from somewhere, and murders Sheriff August Corbin at a farm.  Ichabod partners with ...Abbie Mills.  Dear god, we went from watching Harper's Island with an Abby Mills to Sleepy Hollow with an Abbie Mills.

Anyway, Crane and Mills become unlikely allies in what is revealed to be a plot to bring about some sort of apocalypse.

I like this show after 2 episodes.  They have fun with the man-out-of-time shtick Ichabod is pulling and counter balance it with a lot of really well done and spooky supernatural surrealism.  I really like the demon's appearances in mirrors, it's crazy looking.  The show's been renewed for a 2nd season, though I dunno how much life there is in something with this sort of premise, it could be fun to watch it evolve.  It's quite entertaining.