Adaptations Made in the Sleepy Hollow TV Series

The ability to not take itself too seriously was, at the beginning, one of the winning cards thanks to which Sleepy Hollow has walked away from the gaming table with my interest in its pocket. But now that the first season has ended, i feel the series could aim to become way more than a funny and bizarre entertainement.

Ideally the premises to do everything wrong were all there. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the short story penned by Washington Irving, has been adapted many times including a silent movie. Each transposition added, altered, renarreted – in a certain degree – the original plot, but it’s fair to affirm that now the most iconic adaptation is Tim Burton‘s Sleepy Hollow.

Kurtsman and Orci, in their take, have chosen to not lean on Burton’s work opting for a current day transposition in which Ichabod Crane is a British soldier who decided, for values as mankind freedom and equality, to ally with the 13 colonies army leaded by George Whashington, the man who became his mentor. In quality of secret agent appointed by Whashington himself, Ichabod apparently died in the 1791 beheading a dreadful and supernatural enemy. Ichabod wakes up in the 2013 thanks to his wife’ spell: Katrina was (is) in fact a powerful witch confined in Purgatory. So, Ichabod Crane is a man who wakes up as a stranger in the same place that once was his home. He has to grieve his wife’s death and yet he is still able to see and contact her: until the finale, if for Katrina the confinement was metaphysic, for Ichabod it was emotional.

But the focal point of entire story-arc is the friend/partnership between Ichabod and Abbie Mills, the police officer who rescue him in the first place: their connection is not by accident and while the improbable couple...

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... my wildest imaginings. And through these centuries, against the impossibility that we would find each other…we did. And I am most grateful for it”. And now, knowing Henry Parrish’ true identity, that grateful and touching though is even more relevant, adding a further depth to that moment: a father and son moment. John Noble portrays Tom Mison’son: brilliantly played, Sleepy Hollowed.

Sleepy Hollow has burned quickly but satisfactorily several potential long run storyline: other series would have been go on for an entire full season just only with the identity, of Moloch, for example. No fillers allowed. And this is another strengh: they have a lot to tell and they don’t need to tease to make us waiting for something sets in future because there is enough substance for now and for then.

To wrap up a very good and intriguing first season, the score by Brian Tyler.