Crane gets new thrills in modern Sleepy Hollow
It’s going to be a busy week on the TV front with 11 new and veteran shows debuting early before the deluge next week. Here’s the overview, with the three new series in boldface.
Monday: 7 p.m., Bones (Fox); Dancing With the Stars (ABC); 8 p.m., SleepyHollow (Fox). Tuesday: 7 p.m., Dads (Fox); 7:30 p.m., Brooklyn
Nine-Nine (Fox); 8 p.m., New Girl (Fox); 8:30 p.m. The Mindy Project (Fox).
Wednesday: 7 p.m., Survivor: Blood vs. Water (Fox).
Friday: 7 p.m., Last Man Standing (ABC); 7:30 p.m., The Neighbors (ABC); 8 p.m., Shark Tank (ABC).
... I’ll be highlighting the other new shows later in the week, but let’s take a look at Fox’s new Monday offering.
The network is touting Sleepy Hollow as a “thrilling, new mystery-adventure drama series.” It’s a male/female buddy cop show like Elementary, The Mentalist or Castle with a supernatural twist.
The mystery part of the adventure deals with the mystical resurrection of Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane, played by Tom Mison. He re-emerges (looking pretty good after 250 years) in the present day to help unravel a mystery that dates to the American Revolution.
I’m not spoiling anything to reveal it has to do with the Headless Horseman. He (it) is back, too, and rumor is that he’s one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“He is Death himself,” Crane says. “He has returned to Sleepy Hollow to finish what he started.” He’s back and he’s swinging a mean battle ax.
Back in the day, Gen. George Washington had personally given Crane the secret mission of killing the horseman. Crane shot him, then lopped off his head.
Crane teams up with Sleepy Hollow Detective Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) — “a young cop whose own supernatural experiences help the two form an unlikely bond.”
There’s a satisfying cinematic quality to the series that ought to please fans of the genre, and a delightful fish-out-of-water aspect to Crane’s dealing with the 21st century. That brings needed levity to the darker aspects of the series.
Mison notes the series works on several levels.
“It’s got the supernatural twist. It’s a cop drama. It’s a thriller. It can frighten people; get people thinking. You’ll never know what to expect. Abbie and Crane have to trust each other because no one else will believe their situation.”
It’s going to take some willing suspension of disbelief to really get into the spirit of this series. Sleepy Hollow is one of those shows that will suffer by too much dissection. If you nit-pick the component parts, you’ll ruin the overall effect.
Example: The population sign for the “quaint village” of Sleepy Hollow says 144,000. That’s a bit more than a village for me.
If vampires can have diaries and werewolves and shapeshifters roam northern Louisiana, then quaint Sleepy Hollow can be the showdown between good and evil.
I gave the series a C+ in my season preview last week. I’m thinking now it deserves a B with a gold star for potential. I’ll be watching the second episode closely to see how it goes.
Bones. What can we expect from Season 9 of the venerable series? In case you’ve forgotten, there was a cliffhanger when last we saw the show in April. Evil, evil computer hacker/serial killer Christopher Pelant has returned and is stalking our heroes.
Bones (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) had finally decided to get married after she proposed. All is happiness and joy until Pelant tells Booth that he will kill innocent people unless Booth turns Bones down. And he’ll kill even more if Booth tells her why.
Our last vision was of a crestfallen Bones and a pensive Booth. Monday’s episode, “The Secrets in the Proposal,” will find Booth having to deal with his secret while trying to find a way to get to Pelant.
Foyle’s War. If you’re a fan of the Masterpiece Mystery! detective drama, I don’t have to sell you on the return. If you haven’t seen it yet, do so.
Series VII of the show comes to PBS and AETN on three consecutive Sundays starting at 9 p.m. today. Only three? Most British series (seasons) work in short spurts like miniseries.
Series VII finds Michael Kitchen and Honeysuckle Weeks back as (now retired) Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle and his former driver Samantha “Sam” Stewart.
It’s 1946 and World War II may be over, but there’s a new war brewing — a Cold War — as Foyle arrives home from visiting America. In the opener, “The Eternity Ring,” the British intelligence outfit MI5 recruits Foyle to investigate a suspected Soviet spy ring that may be connected to Sam.
Sam is now married and her husband plans to run for Parliament.
Check it out. Foyle’s War is clever, understated British drama at its best.