I saw the debut episode on a plane trip this week.
Crane is re-imagined as an Oxford don turned soldier, then traitor, then spy for General Washington. (Washington did have a strong belief that spies were important in winning the war.) This background allows Crane to play both the role of frontline hunk _and_ team librarian/source of all occult knowledge. Crane has back-up in the occult area from his wife of 250 years ago, who just happens to be a witch, and trapped somewhere by Unamed Evil so that she can drop clues on Ichabod through visions, dreams and mirrors.
Washington Irving's Crane was a comical, credulous local school teacher who loved ghost stories. The name Ichabod makes sense in Puritan New England, but not England itself. And as anyone from Montclair knows, the Crane family was important in this part of New Jersey during that time. Anyway.
So the bucolic town of Sleepy Hollow turns out to host multiple competing occult groups. Three killings in the first episode, two of members fo the sherrif's department. Crane teams up with the remaining Deputy to stop the Apocalypse. No, really, there are high stakes in this show.
It all feels a bit like National Treasure mashed up with Buffy. Crane provides some fish-out-water time travel humor. We can only hope it will be better than The Dome.
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