TV Review: Sleepy Hollow

I have a new paranormal fantasy show!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

I saw the previews for this show last summer, but I hesitated to watch it for two reasons. First, and most importantly, it’s on FOX. They like to cancel things. In fact, I only decided to watch the show this weekend, after learning that it had, in fact, earned a second season.

The other reason I hesitated (though not as important as the first) was because I had trouble seeing how they were going to turn a tiny little short story into the basis for a long-standing TV series. The answer is simple: They take serious liberties, throw in a few other myths and legends, add two dynamic lead characters, and shake well.

I love Abbie and Ichabod. Abbie is a black policewoman … Wait! Did I just say the female lead is black? Why yes, I think I just did. Someone quick, give me another example of a black woman starring in a TV show that isn’t almost entirely about black people.

So, kudos already. But I don’t want to get hung up on skin color, because the truth is that Abby is a terrific lead character with a complicated past. She’s tough without being the cliche kick-ass heroine. She’s smart and feisty and scared.

Ichabod, meanwhile, has been asleep for a quarter of a millennium. (Yes, that part was from Rip Van Winkle, more or less, not The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Let’s not split hairs.) He was a spy in the Revolutionary War on special assignment from George Washington. He’s sharp, honorable, has a great English accent, and as a man out of time is easily sympathetic.

I see lots of possibility for both characters to develop as we learn more about their pasts and as they learn more about whatever is going on

And there is a lot more going on here than a headless horseman — aka Death, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The end of days may be coming, and there are hints in the very first episode that the show’s creators have a seven-season arc. Here’s hoping they get to show it!

Posted in Movie and TV Reviews.