Over the last few days I’ve been checking out some of the many new tv shows that came out this fall. There is no way I will watch them all, but I try to at least catch the pilots for all the brand new stuff. First up, Sleepy Hollow.
Sleepy Hollow is an ambitious show. They are essentially telling the same old story of Ichabod Crane, but setting it in modern times. They didn’t take the easy way out of just making all the characters from present-day. They went to the trouble of having Ichabod and the Headless Horseman travel through time from colonial Sleepy Hollow and appear again in modern-day Sleepy Hollow.
That takes some guts, and a bit of explanation, which is dangerous for a pilot. They introduced the story of The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse and threw in a witch for good measure. For a pilot it was a little rough just trying to hash through the supernatural elements of it all.
When a character travels through time there is the expected “fish out of water” jokes that always seem to come along with that. This show doesn’t avoid those cheap jokes, and executes them just as poorly as you might imagine. The dialog was rough, and the actors didn’t offer a whole lot in terms of screen presence. I was hoping Ichabod would at least be badass or something, but the jury is still out on that one.
Overall the pilot was not great. However, I will watch at least a couple more episodes. They had to get things set up, and that bogged down the first episode. Without that burden it might get better going forward. I am willing to stick it our for a couple more weeks. I’m not totally sure what form this series will take, but I am interested in the premise enough to keep going. By this time they are up to episode 5, so you all might already know how extremely dreadful the show really is.
Filed Under: Fox, Sleepy Hollow, Television