Sleepy Hollow - Season 1

Check my boots the fuck out, yeah!

Sleepy Hollow is a TV series based on Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in much the same way that The LEGO Movie was based on the instructions for building a LEGO City fire engine.

The nervous, upwardly mobile Connecticut schoolmaster of the novel is replaced by Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison), soldier of the crown turned rebel and the Headless Horseman from a practical joke by a romantic rival to the First Horseman of the Apocalypse called forth by the demon-lord Moloch. Taking a leaf from the Tim Burton adaptation, Crane's wife Katrina (Katia Winter) is, rather than a spoiled coquette, a woman of deep principles and sensibility, and a secret white witch. When Ichabod is mortally wounded decapitating the Horseman, Katrina casts a spell to allow him to sleep until the Horseman returns. Thus he wakes in 2013 and hilarity ensues.

Crane soon finds himself in the company of Abbie Mills (Nicole Behari), a Lieutenant in the Sleepy Hollow PD (or a deputy sheriff; I'm not sure how it works), and the two of them learn that they are the Witnesses of Revelation, set to encounter seven years of tribulations to prevent the comping Armageddon, armed only with a series of documents collected by Abbie's now dead mentor (played by Clancy Brown), hints from the Purgatory-bound Katrina and a set of mad occult devices left by the Founding Fathers, who were totally fucking demon hunters and shit.

Let us not mince words here, Sleepy Hollow is as mad as a bag of foxes. Its history is complete hogwash (the Elizabethan settlers of the colony at Roanoke apparently spoke Middle English), and it throws Freemasons and Golems and God knows what around like they had no existing symbolism. Nevertheless, I love it, because it just powers through all of its failings on the strength of the actors absolute conviction. Mison and Behari, and supporting players Winter, Lyndie Greenwood and Orlando Jones and John Noble, defy every opportunity to wink at the camera, and so carry the drama through the absurdity.

As you can see, the Headless Horseman has absolutely no problem moving
with the times.

It doesn't hurt that the show makes no attempt to be high and worthy drama, and instead focuses on supernatural action and mild horror, tempered with humour. The latter comes mostly from Crane's reactions to the 21st Century, or his reminiscences of famous figures from his original time (such as his discovery that 'faithful husband' Thomas Jefferson had children by at least one of his slaves and had taken credit for a joke Crane made about the gutter press.

In a not-uncommon format, the first half of the season focuses primarily on backstory and stand-alone adventures, while the second moves into arc development and set-up for the big end of season reveal and cliffhanger (which is very well done.) I was pretty sure that Sleepy Hollow would go the way of The Tomorrow People and Believe and never come back, so that ending left me pretty freaked out.

Fortunately, it is back for a second Season, with a Second Horseman.