“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, the classic bone-chilling tale of ill-fortuned schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his flight from the terrifying specter known as The Headless Horseman, has made it’s return to pop culture.
The story, first published in an 1819 collection of short stories by American author Washington Irving, has had several different film and TV adaptations; from the 1922 silent film version to the 1999 Tim Burton film “Sleepy Hollow”. Since then, the story has been used in several different television shows and books.
While many minor details vary from story to story, the main plot has always stayed the same. That is, until the most recent variation of this classic Halloween tale came to the Fox network.
The popular new television series “Sleepy Hollow” premiered on Sept. 16th and has since received high praise for its creativity and willingness to take an old story and completely re-imagine it.
In this latest rendition, Ichabod Crane, played by Tom Mison, is a former Revolutionary War soldier who is resurrected into the little town of Sleepy Hollow 250 years after the war ends. Hot on his tail is none other than The Headless Horseman. Crane soon discovers that it is his duty, alongside police Lieutenant Abbie Mills, played by Nicole Beharie, to stop the Hessians from using the Horseman and an army of other resurrected demons to bring about the apocalypse that is written of in the Book of Revelation. All of this is revealed in just the first episode.
This enormous deviation from the original plot of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was a gamble that seems to have paid off for the show’s creators Len Wiseman and Alex Kurtzman. In a time when a lot of new TV shows are premiering and veteran shows are returning, a television show that is trying to get off the ground has to have something special to make it stand out and really attract an audience, and “Sleepy Hollow” has done this wonderfully because of it’s creativity.
Vernie Gay, a writer for newsday.com, says that “Sleepy Hollow”, “Goes to a place mainstream TV doesn’t bother with all that much anymore – horror fantasy, tentatively rooted in the real world, with elements of myth, the Bible, witchcraft, and a smattering of historical balderdash thrown in.”
According to TVline.com, “Sleepy Hollow” was the best launch for the Fox network in six years, achieving a rating of just over 10 million viewers. Since then, ratings have dropped slightly but are still high and steady enough to be considered “going strong”.
Between the occasional jump scares and the witty culture shock moments from Crane, the show has a plot that is fun and interesting enough for the viewer to be entertained. “Sleepy Hollow” has potential to become a strong weekly adventure.